The Ambasamudram Judicial Magistrate Court acquitted Bala, the National Award-Winning Tamil Filmmaker, from a defamation case filed against him for the portrayal of Singampatti zamindar and the Sorimuthu Iyyanaar temple in his film Avan Ivan, The New Indian Express reported.
Avan Ivan is a 2011 comedy-drama film. The film was Bala’s fifth directorial venture. The film starring Vishal and Arya in the lead roles was produced by Kalpathi S Agoram under the AGS Entertainment Banners.
According to IMDb, the film’s plotline reads, “A zamindar takes an affinity to two extremely playful half-brothers who openly con people for a living. But a local animal smuggler steps in to disrupt the harmony in the lives of the zamindar and his adopted family.”
And after the film’s release, Shankar Aathmajan, son of the Zamindar, filed a case against filmmaker Bala stating that the film has depicted the hereditary protectors of the Sorimuthu Ayyanar temple, the Singampatti zamindars, in a bad taste.
After ten years of trial, Magistrate J Karthikeyan on Thursday acquitted the director of the film, accepting his argument that the plot and the story were penned by him, out of his own imagination.
Speaking to the media persons after the judgment, the director’s counsel, Mohammed Usain said that the court accepted their argument expressing that they did not slander the temple and the Zamindar. It may also be noted that earlier, the court had closed the proceedings against actor Arya who was also accused of similar defamatory charges.
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Bala last directed Dhruv Vikram-starrer Varmaa, one of the Tamil remakes of the 2017 Telugu film Arjun Reddy. Though the filming happened in 2018, the film’s release was cancelled after the production house E4 entertainment was unsatisfied with the output. The director later issued a press statement in which he said that he had opted out of the film on his own and cited restrictions on his creative freedom as a reason for it. “In order to safeguard creative freedom, it was my own decision to relieve myself from this project,” he added. The film was released on October 6, 2020, on the Simply South OTT platform.
Bala will be donning the producer’s hat for the upcoming Tamil film titled Visithiran, which is the official Tamil remake of the Malayalam film Joseph (2018). M Padmakumar who directed Joseph will be helming the Tamil adaptation.