NEW DELHI: The Delhi Excessive Court docket stated on Wednesday that with the discharge of Netflix docuseries ‘Dangerous Boy Billionaires’, the plea by Mehul Choksi, an accused within the Rs 13,500-crore PNB fraud case, for its pre-screening remained “an instructional train” as every thing was “virtually over”.
A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh additional noticed that there was no urgency within the matter, the view firmly supported by Netflix.
Senior advocate Neeraj Kishan Kaul, showing for Netflix, stated that three of the 4 episodes of the sequence have already been launched worldwide.
The fourth episode pertaining to B Ramalinga Raju was stayed by a court docket in Andhra Pradesh and the matter was nonetheless pending adjudication there, Kaul informed the bench.
He stated there was solely a two-minute reference to Choksi, because the uncle of Nirav Modi, in your entire sequence and no case of violation of the elemental proper to a good trial was made out.
Advocate Vijay Aggarwal, showing for Choksi, nevertheless opposed the contentions of Netflix.
The court docket, thereafter, listed the matter for listening to on February 12.
Within the petition filed by Aggarwal, Choksi has claimed that there’s footage about him within the sequence which allegedly exhibits him in a nasty gentle and subsequently, may have an effect on the varied proceedings in opposition to him in India.
The bench is listening to Choksi’s attraction in opposition to a single decide order of August 28, 2020 dismissing his plea for pre-screening of the sequence.
The decide had stated that he had an alternate treatment accessible — of submitting a civil go well with — and {that a} writ petition for enforcement of a personal proper was not maintainable.
Netflix had earlier informed the bench that Choksi was conscious of the subject material of the docuseries since early January 2019 when he was contacted for an interview in relation to the programme and he was interviewed in Might 2019.
Nonetheless, the interview was not utilized because it didn’t meet the target of the episode, Netflix had stated.
It had additionally stated that the petition was not maintainable because the excessive court docket has previously held that excessive (OTT) or web video streaming platforms can’t be regulated and the one choice was to file a civil go well with.
It had additional stated that there could be no pre-censorship within the type of a preview or pre-screening of the docuseries as the identical can be violative of the liberty of speech and expression.
Choksi, the promoter of Gitanjali Gems, and his nephew, Nirav Modi, are accused within the Rs 13,500-crore Punjab Nationwide Financial institution (PNB) fraud case.
