An award-winning Indian documentary-maker sued New York City on Tuesday because police ordered him to stop filming in public in 2005 and held him for four hours, apparently suspecting he was plotting an attack. The New York Civil Liberties Union, acting as lawyers for filmmaker Rakesh Sharma, believes it is the first suit to challenge police restrictions on taking pictures in public in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

It alleges Sharma’s constitutional rights to free speech and against unreasonable search and seizure were violated. Sharma has won numerous international film awards for the documentaries “Final Solution,” on the killing of Muslims in the northwest Indian state of Gujarat in 2002 and 2003, and for “Aftershocks,” on the 2001 earthquake in Kutch, Gujarat.

He was taking video with a hand-held camera in midtown Manhattan for a project about New York taxi drivers last May when he was stopped by a plainclothes officer, questioned on the sidewalk, taken in for more questioning and had his camera damaged, the federal lawsuit alleges. The civil liberties union said it was concerned about a growing but undetermined number of incidents where police stop people from taking pictures in public.