The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a plea to restrain Bhansali Productions from releasing Alia Bhatt-starrer 'Gangubai Kathiawadi' for allegedly containing defamatory material against the family of the protagonist.
A bench of Justices Indira Banerjee and J K Maheshwari dismissed the petition filed by Gangubai's adopted son Babuji Rawji Shah against the Bombay High Court order.
The film, made on the life of a young girl who started as a sex worker and rose to become Madame in the red light area, is set to be released on Friday.
The filmmaker's counsel claimed the movie was not derogatory at all, rather it glorified Gangubai. They also submitted that there is also a statue in her name.
They said that the movie has been promoted for more than seven months, and it is all over social media.
On Wednesday, the bench sought to know if it was possible to change the title.
Responding to the court's query, the filmmaker's counsel said it was not possible just days before the release.
In his plea, filed through lawyers Arun Kumar Sinha and Rakesh Singh, Gangubai's adopted son claimed that the novel and the movie tarnished the image of his mother and the family.
The statements made in the plaint satisfied the ingredients of defamation, it said.
His counsel said the High Court ought to have granted temporary injunction against printing, promoting, selling, assigning, etc, the novel namely, 'The Mafia Queens of Mumbai' or the film namely 'Gangubai Kathiawadi'.
The High Court had stayed the summons issued by a Mumbai court in a criminal defamation complaint against actress Alia Bhatt, the producers of 'Gangubai Kathiawadi', and authors of the novel, S Hussain Zaidi and Jane Borges.
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