New Delhi, Aug 28 The Delhi High Court on Friday dismissed a petition filed by PNB scam accused diamond merchant Mehul Choksi against Netflix's upcoming web series "Bad Boy Billionaires: India" seeking postponement of the release date .
A single judge bench of the high court presided by Justice Navin Chawla while dismissing the petition granted liberty to Choksi to seek appropriate legal remedy.
"The remedy of the petitioner would be in a civil suit as what is being alleged by the petitioner is infringement of his private right. In view of the abuse submissions, the present petition is dismissed leaving it open to the petitioner to seek appropriate legal remedy," the judge said.
The petition filed by Choksi through advocate Vijay Aggarwal seeks the court's direction to the OTT platform to not release the episode/portion of the Documentary "Bad BoyA Billionaires - India" insofar as it relates to Choksi or is prejudicial to his rights or mentions him during the pendency of investigations and/or trials against him.
During the course of hearing, advocate Vijay Aggarwal while opposing the argument of Netflix that it isn't governed by the Indian laws and can't be regulated, said, "If you're doing business in India, you should respect the Constitution of India or else we will ban you like Chinese apps."
Aggarwal further submitted: "Till the time Union of India won't do anything, I will continue to come to my Lords. They are making crores of money from us but we are not regulating them. Uber came to India, it was not being regulated, one rape incident happened and they were regulated."
Senior advocate Neeraj Kishan Kaul appearing for the OTT platform told the court that Choksi has just come over an apprehension and the trailer of the upcoming docu series has no mention of him.
He also questioned as to whether a filmmaker now be required to take a pre censorship from proclaimed offenders before releasing a movie or a book.
Responding to the prayer in the petition regarding the pre screening of the upcoming venture, Kaul said, "Can an apprehension be the basis of pre screening."
Senior Advocate Dayan Krishnan who was also representing the OTT platform said Choksi knew about this docu series since 2018. "He does not deliberately make the production house a party, so that the suppression can be done quietly," Dayan said while adding that the current writ petition is filed just to bypass a civil suit.
Rebutting to the said arguments and objecting to his client being called a "fugitive", Aggarwal said, "They have section 14 for declaring a fugitive. But, with utmost respect, my client is not a fugitive; there is a stay on the proceedings. They called me fugitive 10 times, they are misinforming the court."
The plea had also sought direction to Netflix to conduct a pre-screening of the Documentary for the court and the counsels for the Petitioner. Appearing for the petitioner, Aggarwal argued that he is not seeking a stay on the documentary but he is seeking that he be shown the preview so that he can agitate.
On the previous date of hearing, Aggarwal had said, "My Lords, the matter is under investigation and the said documentary will prejudice the rights of the accused (petitioner)."
On the other hand, senior advocate Neeraj Kishan Kaul appearing for Netflix opposed the said petition on the grounds of maintainability saying that the documentary has a two minute piece where mentions of Choksi has been made.
Choksi in his petition stated that he became aware of the Documentary's imminent release on August 24 when he saw the trailer and started receiving phone calls from various persons across the world, including from Delhi, asking him whether he was part of the Documentary and to solicit his comments for the same.
"Thereafter, the Petitioner discovered that one of the persons seen speaking in the trailer was one Mr. Pavan C. Lall who had written a book titled "Flawed: The Rise and Fall of India's Diamond Mogul Nirav Modi" where also the Petitioner's name had been comingled with Nirav Modi's," said the plea.
The plea states that with the release of this documentary there is a real and substantial threat of prejudice to the fairness of the trial and to the rights of the Petitioner (Choksi) under Articles 21. "A trial by media is always detrimental to the case of the Petitioner and is totally contrary to the trite rule that an accused person is innocent until proven guilty by a court of law," the plea read.
Choksi further stated that the release of the Documentary would cause severe impact on the his reputation as well as create a widespread perception of guilt notwithstanding the fact that no competent court has found him guilty.
( With inputs from IANS )
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