In a fresh development in Kangana Ranaut-Javed Akhtar’s defamation case, the Bombay High Court shot down a petition of Kangana Ranaut that sought a stay on the defamation trial. In addition to seeking for a stay, Kangana Ranaut also wanted the case to be clubbed with another complaint she had filed against the popular lyricist.
If reports by Live Law were to be believed, Justice Prakash Naik dismissed Kangana Ranaut’s writ petition to stay or club the proceedings, since Kangana never indicated that the cases were cross cases. Justice Prakash Naik stated, “At this stage the relief sought in the petition cannot be granted. Earlier it was never contended by the petitioner (Kangana) that both cases are cross cases.”
For the unversed, a sessions court on August 8 had asked Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut to file a reply to veteran poet-lyricist Javed Akhtar’s application challenging the summons issued to him by a magistrate’s court in a case filed by her.
Additional sessions judge (Dindoshi court) A Z Khan, presiding over the case related to alleged criminal intimidation, issued a notice to Ranaut seeking her reply and adjourned the matter to a later date.
Akhtar moved a revision petition before the sessions court, saying the summons to him was issued by the metropolitan magistrate’s court in suburban Andheri in a “hasty and inappropriate manner”, which has resulted in “grave miscarriage of justice”.
The plea, filed through advocate Jay Bharadwaj, stated that prima facie, there is nothing on judicial record to show there was sufficient material available with the magistrate for passing the impugned order.
“The magistrate simply proceeded on the bald and unsubstantiated arguements made in the complaint without ascertaining the overall factual matrix and the judicial record,” the plea said.
It further stated that the magistrate failed to appreciate that serious prejudice shall be caused to the rights of the petitioner if he is made to face the trial in a time-barred matter that too where the ingredients of all the sections alleged in the complaint are not applicable.
In 2020, the 76-year-old lyricist filed a complaint, claiming Ranaut had made defamatory statements against him in a television interview, which allegedly damaged his reputation. He alleged the “Queen” actress had dragged his name during the interview while referring to a ‘coterie’ existing in Bollywood, following the alleged suicide by filmstar Sushant Singh Rajput in June 2020.
The 36-year-old actor later filed a counter-complaint in the same court against Akhtar for alleged “extortion and criminal intimidation”. Ranaut, in her complaint, claimed that following her public dispute with a co-star, the lyricist had called her and her sister Rangoli Chandel to his house with “malafide intentions and ulterior motives and then criminally intimidated and threatened” her.
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