There’s a new development in the ongoing legal battle between Sameer Wankhede and Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment. A while ago, the former had filed a 2 crore defamation suit at the Delhi High Court against the latter, which backed Aryan Khan's directorial debut The Ba***ds of Bollywood, streaming on Netflix.
In Wankhede’s plea for an interim injunction to halt the show's streaming, the former NCB officer alleged that one of the scenes in the satirical series was a veiled attack on him and that the depiction had damaged his reputation.
Now, Red Chillies, in its response through their legal counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul, said the show doesn't make any reference to the 2021 Cordelia cruise incident.
Aryan Khan was falsely implicated after a 2021 drug raid by Wankhede at the aforementioned venue, which led to the filmmaker’s arrest and confinement in jail for 25 days.
In his argument on behalf of Red Chillies, Kaul said: “Can satire and fiction co-exist? There is no law that says otherwise. I may be partly inspired by real persons and stories, yet there can be disclaimers; no problem with two existing together. Where is the ill-will or malice? This is about a success story at a Bollywood party.”
Kaul added the series tackles "20 different issues", and it's unfair to pick a "stray instance" or a "passage here or there" to jump to certain conclusions. “We are not looking at people who are sensitive; hurt is not grounds for malice. Can you pick a stray instance, a passage here or there? The series is about 20 different issues. We do not show a documentary on the Cordelia cruise incident. I am inspired by overzealous officers. That is far from saying that this is the Cordelia cruise story.”
Representing Aryan's vision, Kaul concluded that the filmmaker is fully entitled to "depict issues ailing Bollywood.”
"You cannot say that the person depicting ills in Bollywood cannot show overzealous officers,” he added. “I cannot be responsible for what other people say… I am fully entitled to depict issues ailing Bollywood. Even if I am to project someone, a public official cannot be that thin-skinned.”
The court had scheduled a hearing on November 27.
