The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a plea seeking to stay the release of Bhansali Productions film “Gangubai Kathiawadi” starring actor Alia Bhatt.
The Sanjay Leela Bhansali movie is scheduled for release on Friday.
A bench of Justices Indira Banerjee and J K Maheshwari after a detailed hearing in the matter dismissed the plea filed by Gangubai’s adopted son, Babuji Rawji Shah, against the Bombay High Court order.
“This special leave petition is dismissed,” said Justice Banerjee recounting an ordeal of a 14-year-old girl, who was trafficked, sexually assaulted, in her struggle to secure four square meals.
Justice Banerjee said that when she was heading the legal services authority in West Bengal and also chaired the legal aid committee there she came across a case. “I came across a trafficked girl and I still get goosebumps… the 14-year-old was not getting four square meals. She was living with her aunt, who could not feed her,” said Justice Banerjee.
She added that later the aunt was asked to come to Mumbai for a job, and she went with her over there and in Mumbai, the girl was abused by multiple men on the same night. “Everyone wanted a young girl… some wanted to have unprotected sex with her. She escaped with help of a journalist and was then handed to an NGO. She contracted HIV too.”
“She caught my hand and said I just wanted to eat. What wrong have I done? This is the plight of people. I don’t look down on anyone.”
Yesterday, the bench during hearing asked “Is changing the title possible?” but the petitioner’s counsel insisted on an interim stay on the release of the movie as the respondent’s counsel argued that name change, days before the release, would not be possible.
During the hearing on Thursday, the filmmaker’s counsel pressed that the movie has been promoted for more than seven months, and it is all over social media. A battery of senior advocates argued that the movie is not derogatory at all, rather it glorifies Gangubai, and pointed out that there is also a statue in her name.
Gangubai’s adopted son in the appeal, filed through lawyers Arun Kumar Sinha and Rakesh Singh, claimed that the novel and the movie ‘defamed’ and tarnished his image, his deceased mother and other family members and statements in the plaint satisfy the ingredients.
His plea said: “…the high court ought to have granted temporary injunction restraining the respondents from printing, promoting, selling, assigning, etc., the novel namely, “The Mafia Queens of Mumbai” or the film namely Gangubai Kathiawadi, which are admittedly defamatory in nature”.
The top court was hearing an appeal against the high court order, which continued the stay on the summons issued by a Mumbai court in a criminal defamation complaint against actress Alia Bhatt, the producers of Gangubai Kathiawadi, and authors S.Hussain Zaidi and Jane Borges, who wrote the book.