Delhi HC reserves verdict in Sameer Wankhede’s suit on ‘Ba***ds of Bollywood’

THe new delhi heights margaret court on tues reserved finding of fact in former Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) officer Sameer Wankhede’s suit seeking directions to Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment and over-the-top (OTT) streaming service platform Netflix to take down certain content from the series ‘Ba***ds of Bollywood’, even as Red Chillies and Netflix maintained that the court lacked the jurisdiction to entertain the plea and the series was a work of fiction and satire.The series, on Netflix, was created, co-written, and directed by Aryan Khan, Shah Rukh Khan’s son, who was arrested by Wankhede in an NCB raid on a cruise ship in 2021. Aryan Khan and five others were exonerated by NCB in 2022. In his suit, Wankhede has sought a take down of content from Episode 1 of the series, specifically from the timestamp 32:02 to 33:50, which features a character who closely resembles him in both appearance and mannerisms.Red chillies and Netflix had previously submitted before a bench of justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav that the court did not have the territorial jurisdiction to consider the defamation suit.Red Chillies’ lawyer Neeraj Kishan Kaul and Netflix’s lawyer Rajiv Nayyar had asserted that the suit ought to have been filed in Bombay (Mumbai), since Wankhede’s residence and Red Chillies’ registered office were present there. While Kaul had argued that the episode in question portrays a fictional story set during a Bollywood success party and was not a recreation of the Cordelia cruise raid, Nayyar had argued that merely contending that the series is directed by Aryan Khan, with whom Sameer Wankhede has a prior history, does not establish malice on Khan’s part and justify the removal of portions from the series.Wankhede’s counsel, Jai Sai Deepak, argued on Tuesday that the suit was prima facie maintainable in Delhi as the principal harm had occurred there. To elaborate on this point, the senior advocate submitted that although Wankhede does not reside in Delhi, the departmental proceedings against him are based in the city; he has relatives and friends living there; Delhi-based media outlets had approached him for interviews after the series was released; and both Red Chillies and Netflix had undertaken significant promotional activity for the series in Delhi.Besides jurisdiction, Deepak, in his rejoinder submissions, further stated that the actor who had allegedly played his role had told him that he had represented him and thus this amounted to an admission. “The actor who did the job told me that I just did my job in representing you. Media houses had drawn this connection before I did that the person is me. None of the publications says that I have been shown in good light, but bad light. The impugned content targets me, shows me in poor light,” he added.Taking these arguments into account, the court reserved its verdict and framed two key questions for consideration: whether the suit is prima facie maintainable, and whether the content in question, if viewed as a whole, is defamatory.