The Delhi High Court has scheduled a hearing for February 12, 2024, on a plea by Krishna Kishore Singh, father of the late Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput. The plea challenges a single-judge bench’s decision that rejected a request to halt the streaming of “Nyay: The Justice,” a film reportedly based on the life of Sushant Singh Rajput.
In July, the Delhi High Court, presided over by Justice C. Hari Shankar, refused to issue a stay order against the streaming of “Nyay: The Justice” on an OTT platform. The court reasoned that the rights to publicity, privacy, and personality vested in Sushant Singh Rajput could not be exercised posthumously, stating,
“The said rights, therefore, did not survive for espousal by the plaintiff.”
Justice Shankar also noted that the content of the film was based on publicly available information, including news reports, and therefore did not violate any rights of Sushant Singh Rajput or his father. He remarked,
“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.”
The judge further explained that even if the film were to violate Rajput’s publicity rights or defame him, these rights were personal to him and could not be inherited by his father. He added,
“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 division bench of Justices Yashwant Varma and Ravinder Dudeja granted time to all parties involved to file their replies. The court’s decision to hear the appeal comes after the film’s release in June 2021, which has presumably been viewed by thousands since.
“Nyay: The Justice” is written and directed by Dilip Gulati, produced by Sarla A. Saraogi and Rahul Sharma, and features a cast including Zuber Khan, Shreya Shukla, Aman Verma, Asrani, Shakti Kapoor, Kiran Kumar, Anant Jog, Anwar Fatehan, and Sudha Chandran in pivotal roles.
