Madras High Court defers judgment in ‘Lingaa’ case

Rajinikanth and Santhanam in "Lingaa".

The Madras High Court Bench here on Monday reserved its judgement on a writ petition filed by an aspiring filmmaker, K.R. Ravi Rathinam, accusing the crew of actor Rajinikanth’s much-awaited movie ‘Lingaa’ of having stolen his script.

Justice M. Venugopal deferred his verdict after hearing arguments advanced by Additional Advocate General (AAG) K. Chellapandian, Assistant Solicitor General (ASG) G.R. Swaminathan and counsel for the petitioner, the actor and director K.S. Ravikumar.

In his submission, petitioner counsel W. Peter Ramesh Kumar contended that the court should order an enquiry into the issue since Mr. Rajinikanth and Mr. Ravikumar had made contradictory statements in their counter affidavits filed in the court.

He pointed out that Mr. Rajinikanth had claimed that both the script as well as the screenplay for the movie had been penned by one S. Ponkumaran though Mr. Ravikumar’s claim was that it was he who wrote the screenplay for the basic storyline of Mr. Ponkumaran.

On the other hand, counsel for the actor urged the court to dismiss the writ petition with extraordinary costs since it had been filed without even watching the movie which was at present under post-production stage and not even submitted before Central Board for Film Certification.

The AAG told the court that the petitioner had lodged a complaint with the Madurai city Commissioner of Police on November 6 and it was forwarded to the Tallakulam Inspector of Police, through the jurisdictional Assistant Commissioner, on November 8 for enquiry.

“On November 20, the petitioner submitted photographs of puja performed for his movie ‘Mullai 999’. However, neither the petitioner nor the respondents had submitted their stories so far. Only on comparison of both the stories, one can come to the conclusion whether both are same or different,” he added.

The ASG, appearing for the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, said that the writ jurisdiction of the High Court could not be invoked to ventilate a grievance among private individuals. “Only a civil suit will lie in such matters and writ cannot lie,” he said.