Akshay Kumar's Toilet: Ek Prem Katha crosses legal hurdle; Jaipur court rejects plea against film

Jaipur: A local court here on Saturday, 5 August, rejected a plea seeking a stay on the release of Akshay Kumar starrer Toilet: Ek Prem Katha. [caption id=“attachment_3772541” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Image via Tiwtter.[/caption] The arguments in the case were completed on 2 August and the judgment was reserved for Saturday. “After hearing arguments for three successive days, the Jaipur Metropolitan Court prima facie found no merit in the case and rejected the application,” SS Hora, counsel for Viacom18, told IANS. “We will study the judgement and then decide our future course of action,” GD Bansal, advocate for Jaipur based filmmaker Pratik Sharma, who had brought a copyright infringement case against the makers of Toilet: Ek Prem Katha. Sharma brought the case against Plan C Studios, an alliance between Reliance Entertainment and Friday Filmworks helmed by Neeraj Pandey and Shital Bhatia, and Viacom18 on 7 July in a Jaipur Metropolitan Court. Sharma had alleged that the makers of Toilet: Ek Prem Katha had lifted the punchline and the subject from his film Gutrun Gutar Gun. The court, on 26 July, asked the makers of Toilet: Ek Prem Katha to file a reply or enter into arguments in the case of copyright violation on 31 July. The court had earlier issued a notice returnable on 22 July, but as a strike by the clerical staff was going on, the court gave the respondents 26 July as a new date for filing their reply. The counsel for the film argued that ideas are in public domain and are not subjected to copyright. Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, directed by Shree Narayan Singh, deals with the need of sanitation in India and is based on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swachh Bharat campaign. It features Bhumi Pednekar with Akshay and will release on 11 August along with David F Sandberg’s horror film Annabelle: Creation, the prequel to John R Leonetti’s 2014 film Annabelle. With inputs from IANS.