“Dhandanaka... naka... naka... naka... Dhandanaka...naka...” goes a song from the 2015 Tamil flick Romeo Juliet starring ‘Jayam’ Ravi and Hansika Motwani. The song begins with hailing multi faceted film personality T. Rajendar and has now got mired into a legal controversy due to a civil suit preferred by him seeking damages of ₹1 crore.
When the case came up before Justice M. Sundar on Thursday, he directed the counsel for the plaintiff as well as the defendants, who included the film’s producer Nandagopal, director Lakshman, musician D. Iman, singer Anirudh and lyricist Rokesh, to complete their pleadings by March 23 so that the court could proceed further.
In his plaint, Mr. Rajendar claimed that he had a “special acting ability, charisma, distinct style of mannerism and a special way of delivering dialogues” in the films in which he had acted. He had acquired mass popularity and was bestowed with several awards both by the Centre as well as the State for his contributions to art and culture.
“The defendants, with ulterior motive, for commercial gain have imitated and copied the original voice of the plaintiff and his unique style of delivering dialogues in the background of the song and thereby infringed his copyright as well as the personality right which he had developed for the past several years as his special style,” his plaint read.
The plaintiff alleged that the defendants had used his style in the song without his consent. Claiming that they had no right to do so, he contended that the defendants were liable to pay him damages to the tune of ₹1 crore for such “unlawful use/misuse” of his name, image and special style of delivering dialogues in the song.
Though the suit had been filed immediately after the song was released in 2015, it had been pending since then for submission of written pleadings. Apart from the producer and director of the movie, Anirudh had also filed a separate written statement which had already been taken on file by the court.
