'Tandav' row: SC turns down makers' plea for interim protection from arrest

The Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to grant interim protection from arrest to Ali Abbas Zafar, director of web series Tandav, and others seeking quashing of FIRs against them for allegedly hurting religious sentiments of Hindus and issued notices to Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and other states on their pleas. However, the court said that the accused could seek bail in the concerned courts where the cases were being heard..

A Bench comprising of Justice Ashok Bhushan, Justice MR Shah and Justice R Subhash Reddy was hearing the the separate petitions filed by the director Ali Abbas Zafar, Aparna Purohit, the head of Amazon Prime India, the writer of the series Gaurav Solanki and actor Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub. The petitions sought the dismissal of FIRs in states such as Karnataka, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, which said that the web series had allegedly hurt the religious sentiments of Hindus.

During the hearing, senior advocate Fali S Nariman appearing for the petitioners, had argued that it was mentioned in the petitions filed by the petitioners on January 22, 2021 that the scenes in the series which were found to be objectionable were removed from the series and assuaged. However, despite this, seven more FIRs were filed against them. When the Bench asked Nariman why they had not approached the High Courts to seek the dismissal of the FIRs, Nariman replied that they were filed in six different states and as the number of FIRs were increasing every day, they were suspecting hidden motives and they wanted to avoid it.

Senior advocate Mukul Rohatagi appearing for Aparna, argued that the makers had admitted that they had not shown anything wrong in the series as the series was a political satire and mentioned that everything else such as cinema and TV would be destroyed if people were so sensitive and requested the court to club all the FIRs together. He raised the point of why the petitioners should approach courts in different states when they were residing in Bombay and quoted the case of the painter MF Hussain in which the FIRs were clubbed together.

Senior advocate Sidharth Luthra, who had appeared for Zafar, Solanki and Mehra, reiterated that the series was an analytical series about politics and people had liked to view it when they had seen it on the OTT platforms.

Advocate Siddharth Agarwal appearing for Ayyub, explained that the views of the fictional character cannot be attributed to the actor playing it. Justice Shah had in turn strictly mentioned that the makers of the series could not hurt religious sentiments and replied to Agarwal that the actor had accepted the contract after reading the script of the series.

The Bench had also turned down the plea of Luthra to grant the makers interim protection and also sought the responses from the states such as Karnataka and Bihar on the pleas.

Tandav, a nine-episode political thriller starring Bollywood actors Saif Ali Khan, Dimple Kapadia and Mohd Zeeshan Ayyub, started streaming recently.

Inputs from PTI