The Supreme Court today (March 20) allowed the petition filed by National Award-winning writer-director Sujoy Ghosh seeking to quash a criminal case filed under section 63 of the Copyright Act, 1957, on the allegation that his Kahaani 2 was based on a plagiarised script.
A bench of Justice Pamidighantam Sri Narasimha and Justice Alok Aradhe quashed the criminal proceedings against Sujoy pending before the chief judicial magistrate, Hazaribagh, Jharkhand.
The Special Leave Petition was filed to challenge the order of the Jharkhand high court, which dismissed the petition filed by Ghosh under section 482 CrPC seeking to quash the criminal proceedings.
The complaint was filed before the CJM, Hazaribagh, Jharkhand by Umesh Prasad Mehta who alleged that the script of Kahaani 2 infringed the copyright of his script titled ‘Sabak’. He said, he had handed over the script of ‘Sabak’ to Sujoy Ghosh in June 2015 to get a recommendation letter from him to register it with a film association. He further alleged that the script of ‘Sabak’ was used to make Kahaani 2 which was released in December 2016. He filed the complaint alleging that this amounted to an offence of copyright infringement under section 63 of the Act.
Sujoy Ghosh denied the allegations, claiming that he had started writing the script of Kahaani 2 in November 2012 and had registered the final draft with the Screen Writers Association in December 2013. He even denied having ever met the complainant or having received the script.
The high court refused to quash the proceedings, observing that the merits of the contentions can be decided only in a trial. Ghosh contended before the Supreme Court that the magistrate issued the summoning order mechanically, without even a prima facie consideration, let alone a comparison, of both the scripts to ascertain if they were similar at all.
