The Karnataka High Court has restrained Netflix from streaming the first episode of its documentary series Crime Scenes: India Detectives, Live Law reported.
Issuing a notice returnable on October 21, the High Court has temporarily directed the streaming giant to block streaming, broadcasting, telecasting, or otherwise making available, the content of the episode titled A Murdered Mother.
Crime Scenes: India Detectives is a four-part documentary series that follows detectives from the Bengaluru City Police investigating four “shocking and gripping” crimes while delving deeper into their complex and challenging inner workings. The series released on September 22.
The murder story in question took place in February 2020, when a Bengaluru-based techie Amrutha allegedly stabbed her mother to death and attempted the same on her brother. The latter survived. Following the incident, she is said to have fled to Port Blair, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, along with her male friend Sridhar Rao S.
The High Court passed the order during the hearing of a petition on October 1 filed by Rao, who is under trial in the case. He is accused of offences under IPC Sections 302 and 307 (murder and attempt to murder), 212 (causing miscarriage), 201 read with Section 34 (causing disappearance of evidence or giving false information to screen offender).
His petition objected to the content of the episode as it contains visuals of the investigation by the police in the FIR against him and “another person.”
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Seeking a temporary injunction, Rao submitted that the content of the episode “prejudices” his defence since it features interviews recorded during the investigation as well as a video recording of a purported confession. “The petitioner’s right to a free and fair trial is severely prejudiced. This is apart from violating the petitioner’s privacy, and the content, without any justification, exposes the petitioner to ridicule and harassment by the public at large.”
The court noted that the episode from Crime Stories: India Detectives is available for viewing to all the registered users of the OTT platform and this could subject the accused to harassment and prejudice. It thus issued the temporary restraining order and issued a notice to Netflix asking for a response.