The Supreme Court today (July 2) issued notice on a petition filed by writer-director Sujoy Ghosh, seeking to quash a criminal case filed under section 63 of the Copyright Act, 1957, on the allegation that his movie Kahaani 2 was based on a stolen script. A bench comprising Justice P.S. Narasimha and Justice R. Mahadevan, while issuing notice to the State of Jharkhand and the complainant, allowed exemption to Ghosh from personal appearance before the magistrate in the proceedings.
The Special Leave Petition was filed challenging 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 chief judicial magistrate, Hazaribagh, by Umesh Prasad Mehta, who alleged that the script of Kahaani 2, released as a sequel to Kahaani, infringed the copyright of his script titled ‘Sabak’. The complainant alleged that he had handed over the script of ‘Sabak’ to Sujoy Ghosh in June 2015 to get a recommendation letter from him to register the script with an industry association. According to the complainant, his script was used to make the film Kahaani 2, released in December 2016. Alleging that this amounted to the offence of copyright infringement as per section 63, he filed the complaint.
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 denied meeting the complainant at all or receiving his script.
The high court refused to quash the proceedings, observing that the merits of the contentions could be decided only in a trial.
Ghosh contended before the apex 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. The complaint did not produce the script of Kahaani 2, and the magistrate, without any consideration, straightaway issued the summons, he argued.
When the script of Kahaani 2 was registered two years before the registration of the script of ‘Sabak’, there cannot be any basis for the allegation of copyright infringement, he contended. He also raised the issue of territorial jurisdiction, contending that the complaint was not maintainable at Hazaribagh as the alleged offence took place completely in Bombay.
It was argued that the high court did not properly exercise its jurisdiction as it failed to quash a “frivolous complaint containing patently absurd and inherently improbable allegations”.
