Supreme Court agrees to hear plea challenging ban on release of 'The Kerala Story' in West Bengal on May 12

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Synopsis

“There is lot of labour which goes into movies. Actors, staff, directors put a lot of labour and it unfair to stay release. If its not good, people will not go,” the CJI had said last week as he expressed his reluctance to stay the release of the film.

CJI DY Chandrachud today agreed to hear on Friday, May12, the plea filed by the producers of The Kerala Story, challenging West Bengal's decision to ban the screening of the film.

Yesterday, a plea was filed by the makers of the movie challenging the ban in West Bengal as well as the de facto ban imposed on the move in Tamil Nadu wherein an "alert" was issued anticipating protests, due to which theatres withdrew from releasing the film.

Today, Senior Advocate Harish Salve mentioned the instant plea before a bench also comprising Justice PS Narasimha.

The CJI then said that as it was going to hear the plea challenging the Kerala High Court's decision to not stay the release of the film on May 15, this plea could also be heard then.

"The thing is, we are losing money everyday, another state has said they are going to ban now..", the Senior Lawyer said in response.

Accordingly, the top court agreed to hear the producer's plea day after tomorrow.

Yesterday, the had ordered that the Special Leave Petition filed against the Kerala High Court's refusal to stay the film shall be taken up on Monday, i.e., May 15, after it was mentioned by Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal who told Court that the High Court had rejected the interim reliefs prayed for.

Notably, on May 5, a division bench of the Kerala High Court comprising Justices N Nagaresh and Sophy Thomas had refused to stay the release of the film while noting that the film was about a terrorist organization, namely Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and had nothing to do with the religion of Islam or Muslims.

A day before that, the Supreme Court on last Thursday had refused to stay the release of the movie, while a bench of CJI DY Chandrachud, Justices PS Narasimha and JB Pardiwala were of the view that the success of the movie should be determined at the box office.  

The film, produced by Sunshine Pictures Private Ltd and directed by Sudipto Sen, was released on Friday, May 05, 2023 in Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu across the country. 

The movie made on girls who fell victims of 'Love Jihad' and landed in Syria and Afghanistan has caused outrage among some sections of the society.

Earlier, a bench of Justices K M Joseph and B V Nagarathna had also declined to entertain an interlocutory application argued by senior advocate Kapil Sibal and advocate M Nizamuddin Pasha in a pending PIL by Qurban Ali, contending the movie was a part of hate speech as the top court noted the film has already been cleared by the Censor board.