New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has rescheduled Krishna Kishore Singh’s plea, which was filed in response to a single-judge bench’s decision to reject his request to stop the ongoing streaming of the movie “Nyay: The Justice,” which is purportedly based on the life of his late son, for February 12, 2024.
All parties to the appeal were given time by a division bench consisting of Justices Yashwant Varma and Ravinder Dudeja to submit their reply.
A division bench of Justices Varma and Dharmesh Sharma served notice to multiple individuals in August about Krishna Kishore Singh’s appeal against the order of Justice C. Hari Shankar.
Justice Shankar had refused to pass an injunction order against the movie — airing on OTT platform Lapalap Original — on grounds that Rajput’s personality, privacy and publicity rights extinguished with his death and cannot be taken forward by his father.
Moreover, the court had observed that the content of the film is based on news reports and news that was aired and, therefore, constitute publicly available information.
“In making a film on the basis thereof, it could not, therefore, be said that the defendants had violated any right of SSR, much less of the plaintiff, especially as the said information had not been questioned or challenged when it appeared in the media, either by SSR or by the plaintiff. Nor were the defendants required to obtain the consent of the plaintiff before making the movie,” Justice Shankar had held.
Even if it is assumed that Rajput’s publicity rights are breached or that he is defamed in the film, the judge had stated that the right in question is personal to Rajput and cannot be attributed to his father.
“Besides, the movie being based on information in the public domain, which, at the time of its original dissemination, was never challenged or questioned, cannot be sought to be injuncted at this distance of time, especially when it has already been released on the Lapalap platform a while ago and must have been seen, by now, by thousands,” the judge had stated.
It had concluded that it cannot pass an order to stop the streaming of the movie — released in June 2021 — especially when it has already been released and must have been watched by thousands of people.
“The movie cannot be said to be infracting Article 19(2) of the Constitution of India. Injuncting further dissemination of the movie would, therefore, infract the defendants’ rights under Article 19(1)(a),” the court had said.
