The Madras High Court will decide in the next two weeks as to whether film director S. Shankar should appear in person to depose in a civil suit filed against him, alleging copyright violation with respect to the story of the 2010 Rajinikanth-starrer Enthiran.
Justice M. Sundar on Wednesday adjourned the hearing on the suit, filed by Tamil writer Aarur Tamil Nadan, by two weeks to enable his counsel to file an appropriate application before Justice V. Bharathidasan who, in July last year, had passed an interim order with respect to examining the director who was the prime defendant.
During the course of hearing, plaintiff’s counsel P. Satheesh Kumar read out the interim order and claimed that the court hadissued a specific direction that the director should adduce evidence in person and not through any of his representatives.
However, advocate Arun C. Mohan, representing the director refuted the claim.
Mr. Mohan stated the director’s secretary C. Yogesh would be adducing evidence on behalf of the director.
He sought the permission of the court to fix a date on which he should be doing so. He also said that Mr. Justice Bharathidasan had never insisted on personal presence of the director and therefore a representative could be allowed to do so.
Since there was a factual dispute between counsel on what transpired during the judicial proceedings before another judge, Mr. Justice Sundar said that the issue could be resolved only by that judge concerned as per the dictum laid down by the Supreme Court in the famous A.R. Antulay’s case in 1988.
The plaintiff had sought for a declaration that he was the author and first owner of the copyright of the story of Enthiran which, according to him, was “stolen” from his original story ‘Jugiba’ that got published in April 1996. He had also sought for damages of ₹1 crore from the director as well as the movie’s producer Kalanidhi Maran of Sun Pictures.
Apart from the suit, the writer had also initiated criminal proceedings against the director as well as the producer before the Metropolitan Magistrate Court here and applications filed by the duo to quash those proceedings were pending before the High Court on its criminal side and posted for hearing on September 28.