BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court on Thursday dismissed an appeal filed by actor and murder-accused Darshan Srinivas and his wife, Vijayalakshmi, opposing the release of the movie, ‘Boss.’ Justice Pradeep Singh Yerur said merely because a movie is released depicting a few instances, which may be similar to the ongoing trial, it cannot be said that the courts dealing with such criminal trial would be influenced or swayed away by such depiction of art or similarities in the movie to decide the merits of the criminal trial.
The petitioners challenged the order passed by the sessions court on June 2 dismissing their application seeking injunction order against the release of 'Boss', produced by Siri Productions and directed by Lava V, alleging that it was shot based on events depicting the pending Renukaswamy murder case.
The counsel for Darshan and his wife contended that the teaser of the film 'Boss', which bears an explicit name 'Inspired by True Events' declaration, uses the moniker ‘Boss’ which is synonymous with the plaintiff, Darshan, and contains 13 factual parallels to the ongoing trial.
The court stated that pursuant to the plaintiff Darshan being implicated in the criminal case, the press and electronic media have been reporting the case based on court hearings and may be based on the investigation on a daily basis.
Therefore, a lot of materials with regard to the plaintiff's criminal case are in the public domain.
Therefore, the materials in the movie are taken out from the public domain. When such being the case, it cannot be said that there is any infringement of the constitutional right of privacy of the plaintiffs, the court added.
The court noted that the Central Board of Film Certification has given a certification with regard to the film 'Boss' and there have been certain disclaimers which have been made out in the film just before the main movie starts in accordance with the guidelines.
