Mumbai court grants bail to Kangana Ranaut in Javed Akhtar defamation case

Actor Kangana Ranaut on Thursday was granted bail by a court in Mumbai in the defamation case filed by writer and lyricist Javed Akhtar, news agency Asian News International reported. She has been granted bail upon furnishing a surety of ₹15,000 and a cash surety of ₹20,000, Bar and Bench reported. On 1 March, the court ordered a bailable warrant against the actor as she failed to respond to the summons issued by the court. Last month, the Mumbai police submitted a report to the court, saying an offence of defamation was made out against the actor. Akhtar filed the complaint against Ranaut in November last year for allegedly making baseless and false statements against him which, according to him, damaged his reputation. In his complaint, the lyricist claimed Ranaut had made defamatory comments against him in an interview by dragging his name while referring to a “coterie” existing in Bollywood, following the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput in June last year. Akhtar in his plea claimed the baseless comments made by Ranaut had caused damage to his reputation. Meanwhile, Karnataka High Court on Thursday (25 March) quashed an First Information Report (FIR) against Ranaut for her controversial tweets related to the farmers protesting against the recently enacted farm laws by the Centre. In her tweets, she had equated the protesting farmers with “terrorists." A single bench of Justice HP Sandesh took the decision of setting aside the FIR on procedural grounds noting that the magistrate’s order against Kangana was passed mechanically, Live Law reported.   “Nowhere the magistrate made any reference that he has perused averments in the complaint and whether it amounts to an offence. The matter has to be remitted back to trial court to look into whether averments made in the complainant amount to offence,” Justice Sandesh said, according to Live Law.