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Synopsis

The Delhi High Court posted late Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s father's plea against an order refusing to restrain the continued online streaming of the movie ‘Nyay: The Justice’, based on his son's life, for hearing on February 12, 2024.

The division bench of Justices Yashwant Varma and Ravinder Dudeja gave time to all the parties involved in the matter to file replies.

The court was informed by Singh's father's counsel that four respondents are being represented by their counsel, while notices have been served to others in the case.

Notably, on August 18, the court issued notice to several people, including the filmmakers, against whom the late actor's father, Krishna Kishore Singh, has alleged that they are taking "unfair commercial advantage" of his deceased son's life.

The movie was released on the OTT platform Lapalap in June 2021, a year after SSR's demise. SSR was found dead in his apartment in Mumbai's suburban Bandra on June 14, 2020.

Notably, on July 11, a single judge bench of Justice C. Hari Shankar said that the actor's publicity and privacy rights were not heritable and had ended with his demise. While dismissing a plea filed by Krishna Kishore Singh, Sushant’s father, the single-judge bench had said, “To fasten a legal right, on something as fleeting as a celebrity appears to be an oxymoron”. “Law cannot allow itself to be a vehicle to promote celebrity culture”, he added.

"The information contained, and shown, in the impugned film, is entirely derived from items which featured in the media and, therefore, constitute publicly available information. 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 court had then observed.

The court had said that all rights infractions that the plaintiff alleged in the plaint, were not his but SSR’s. SSR is no more, and the rights themselves are not heritable, the court had held.

On the concept of ‘celebrity rights’, the single-judge bench had said, “The concept of celebrity rights as a distinct compendium of rights available only to celebrities is, legally, I must confess, completely unacceptable to me”.

“Celebrities, oftentimes, spring into being overnight, and vanish from the public eye just as quickly. Who can forget Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Ismail, the child actors who played the young lead performers in the celebrated ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ who, after an evening of glory, were found to have returned to the Mumbai slums, enmeshed in a spate of controversies? To fasten a legal right on something as fleeting as celebrity status, to my mind, appears an oxymoron”, the court had stated in its 68-page order.

Case Title: Krishna Kishore Singh v. Sarla A Saraogi & Ors.