The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to grant urgent hearing to an interlocutory application that sought stay on the release of controversial movie ‘The Kerala Story,’ observing that since the movie had been certified by the Central Board of Film Certification, the petitioners should approach the concerned High Court first for relief. Supreme Court refuses to halt release of The Kerala Story, tells petitioner to approach appropriate forum
The observations were made by the Bench of Justice K.M. Joseph and Justice B.V. Nagarathna on an interlocutory application, which was filed in a pending writ petition seeking action against crimes related to hate speech.
The Apex Court noted that it could not interfere with a film that had gone through a process of certification by the Censor Board unless the certification was challenged in a substantive petition.
Advocate Nizam Pasha mentioned the matter before the Apex Court, alleging that the movie was the ‘worst instance of hate speech’ and also called it an ‘audio-visual propaganda’.
The Bench, while observing that it cannot tag the matter, asked the petitioner to move the High Court first and said that every challenge cannot start with the Supreme Court.
Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, who joined the proceedings later, urged the top court of the country to look at the transcript during the recess. He contended that the trailer has already recorded 16 million views and the movie was slated to release in multiple languages – Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu. He said by tomorrow, he will file a substantial petition.
When the Apex Court observed that it should have been mentioned before the Chief Justice of India first, Sibal said that the present recourse was adopted in view of the limited time available before the movie’s release.
Stating that he will file a substantive petition tomorrow and seek an urgent listing by mentioning before the Chief Justice of India, Sibal said that by the time the petition is listed, the movie will be released.
He further requested the Apex Court to look at the IA in the meantime.
When Justice Nagarathna told the Senior Counsel that he cannot start everything at the Supreme Court, Sibal replied that the Apex Court had earlier interfered in the case related to the UPSC jihad show on Sudarshan TV.
Justice Joseph said that he was aware of the controversy regarding the movie as he had watched the TV discussion regarding it. However, he again questioned the method adopted by the petitioner, stating that this was not the right forum to seek relief.
Directed by Sudipto Sen and produced by Vipul Amritlal Shah, the film has courted controversy for making claims that nearly 32,000 women from Kerala were converted through deceit into Islam and forced to join ISIS.