Five students at a Catholic Church-run college in Kerala, India have been expelled on April 2 after producing a short film with gay themes for an inter-college film festival.

The 5-minute long film, titled Secret Minds, which is said to contain partial nudity explores the secret woes of being gay. The film was directed by a postgraduate student in cinema and television, at St Joseph's College of Communications, Changanacherry in Kottayam, while four other undergraduate multimedia students at the same college had acted in the film.

The students have defended their film on grounds of artistic expression saying that their film was not intended for public viewing and was "targeted at the festival crowd" where "only creativity matters and issues of morality are swept aside," but school authorities were unconvinced.

"We teach modern technology and so we are generally open to new ideas. But this film was outrageously indecent," a senior teacher at the college was quoted as telling a local newspaper.

Despite the thriving gay scenes in the major cities, gay sex is considered taboo and is criminalised under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. The move also comes weeks after three Indian states - Maharashtra, Gujerat and Madhya Pradesh - banned sex education in schools.