Bombay HC refuses to hear Javed Akhtar's plea against Kangana Ranaut

The Bombay High Court today, 26 July refused to hear veteran Bollywood lyricist Javed Akhtar’s intervention plea against actor Kangana Ranaut. His petition alleged that the actor deliberately ‘misled the court’ and stated that there are no criminal cases against her in order to get her passport renewed from the Passport Authority of India. In return, Ranaut too had filed a plea in the court requesting to cancel all proceedings in the case. During the proceeding, the court couldn’t hear Ranaut’s plea after Akhtar’s lawyers Vrinda Grover and Jay Bharadwaj pointed out that the actor’s petition should have been moved before a single judge bench instead of a division bench. However, Akhtar too has received a setback as a bench of Justice SS Shinde and Justice NJ Jamadar refused to hear his side. The bench stated that if the court allows him to intervene then they will be flooded with similar pleas. “Today, you do not have the right to an audience. If we allow this application, then what about hundreds of other people? The court will be overflooded with hundreds of such pleas. We have our limitations. We are not entertaining an intervention application by someone who is not a complainant (in FIRs in question),” the court said. According to The Indian Express, the Bombay HC has now suggested Akhtar to approach the complainant in the public prosecutor’s office or the Bandra sedition case to express his grievances. For the unversed, Akhtar’s lawyer Grover, in the petition, had stated that Ranaut’s statement of no pending criminal cases was misleading and false. In the plea, Akhtar’s argument was that the response of Ranaut’s lawyer regarding criminal cases was limited to the copyright violation and sedition FIRs, however, the lyricist has also filed a criminal defamation case against the Tanu Weds Manu actor which was not taken into account.