Kangana Ranaut, the National-award winning Hindi actor who has courted controversies for her tweets and remark, was granted bail on Thursday by a Mumbai Court in the Javed Akhtar defamation case, Bar and Bench tweeted.
Akhtar, the veteran poet, lyricist and screenwriter, filed a complaint against Ranaut on November 3, 2020, under Sections 499 and 500 (defamation) of the Indian Penal Code alleging that she had made defamatory remarks in an interview with Republic TV after the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput.
Rajput died by suicide on June 14, 2020 in Mumbai, sparking several controversies regarding mental health issues and nepotism in the Hindi film industry along with a massive drug probe being investigated by the Narcotics Control Bureau and the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Ranaut had made several remarks about such issues and in one of the interviews with Republic TV’s editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami aired on July 19, 2020, she said that some of the senior members of the Hindi film industry, including Akhtar, were a part of a “gang” that was against the “outsiders” in the industry.
In the plea filed by Akhtar, he mentioned that Ranaut dragged his name to “immaculate reputation by falsely attributing statements to him” while speaking about Rajput’s demise “without appearing to have any direct personal knowledge of the circumstances around his death”.
The plea also mentioned that that actor was “needlessly dragging the complainant’s name into an unconnected, sensitive matter is tantamount to extending veiled threats to the complainant, who is an extremely respectable member of the film fraternity”.
The Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court in Andheri had issued a bailable warrant to Ranaut after she failed to appear before the court despite being summoned without any “justified reason”. The warrant was returnable on Friday.
On Thursday, the Andheri Magistrate court granted bail to Ranaut upon furnishing a surety of Rs 15,000 and a cash surety of Rs 20,000 after she moved to the court for the cancellation of the bailable warrant issued.
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On the same day, the Karnataka High Court quashed the order passed by a state Magistrate asking the police to register a First Information Report against Ranaut over her controversial tweets on the farmers’ protest, reported Live Law.
The complaint was filed in September 2020 by Karnataka-based advocate Ramesh Naik against the actor for her tweet where she called the protesting farmers as “terrorists” from across the country who have been protesting peacefully in Delhi’s borders for several months against the three Farm Bills passed by the Centre in its 2020 monsoon session.