The Bombay high court has directed Dil Raju, producer of Telugu film V, to state if he will leave it to the court to decide the final amount payable to settle the dispute that arose because he used actress Sakshi Malik’s picture illicitly in the film. Sakshi had filed a defamation suit as her photograph had been used with reference to a female escort or commercial sex worker. The film was premiered on Amazon Prime Video in September last year. The court had on 2nd March this year asked the producer to pull down the film from the OTT platform and delete the objectionable scene before streaming it again. The film was granted permission to stream again, after deletion of the scene, from 4th March.
On 25th March, Sakshi Malik’s advocate submitted two amounts suggested by each side for a “complete and overall settlement of the disputes”. While Sakshi gave her consent to the court to decide the final amount, Justice Gautam Patel asked Dil Raju’s advocate to take specific written instructions one way or the other. The matter was posted for further hearing on 1st April.