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Synopsis

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday refused to stay the screening of the movie ‘Nyay: The Justice’, based on late Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput (SSR).

The movie was released on the OTT platform Lapalap in June 2021, a year after his demise.

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 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 observed.

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

“Besides, the impugned 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 movie cannot be said to be infracting Article 19(2) of the Constitution of India. Injuncting further dissemination of the movie would, therefore, infract the defendants‘ rights under Article 19(1)(a)”, it said.

On the concept of ‘celebrity rights’, the single-judge bench 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”.

"I have not come across any judicial authority, having binding precedential value on me, which lends judicial recognition to "celebrity rights". It does not appear permissible, in our constitutional scheme, which guarantees equality to individuals, and in which equality is a cherished preambular goal, to countenance an "extra" bundle of rights which would be available for enjoyment only to celebrities”, the court said.

Justice Shankar said that law cannot allow itself to be a vehicle to promote celebrity culture. Rights which emanate from one‘s personality, and persona, would be available to one and all, and not only to celebrities. “Rights which enure because of the special personal achievements of individuals are, of course, to be sedulously protected, and deserve recognition. That is altogether different from conferring, on an individual, additional rights merely because he, or she, is a “celebrity”, the court added.

“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 said in its 68-page order.

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