Court seeks Akshay Kumar's contact details, exempts others

A Delhi court today sought the personal coordinates of actor Akshay Kumar after it was told that summons could not be served on him in a defamation case filed by Bata footwear company which had objected to a dialogue in the Bollywood film 'Jolly LLB 2'.
The court, however, exempted other accused - actor Annu Kapoor, director Subhash Kapoor and film producer Fox Star Studios India Pvt Ltd, from personal appearance after their counsel said they were busy due to prior committments.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sandeep Garg, who had summoned all accused earlier this month, posted the matter for hearing in April considering that the Delhi High Court was seized of Fox Star Studios India's plea against the summons, which is likely to come up next month.

Yesterday, the high court had issued notice to Delhi Police on the producer company's plea and sought its reply before the next date of hearing on March 30. It had, however, refused to stay the summons for today.
While seeking exemption for the accused from personal appearance, their counsel informed the court that Annu Kapoor and Subhash Kapoor were out of town, while the producers of the film were busy in prior commitments.
The court had on February 8 summoned actors Akshay Kumar and Annu Kapoor, writer and Director Subhash Kapoor and some top officials of Fox Star asking them to appear today.

Bata India Limited, in its complaint, had alleged that "disparaging comments and defamatory reference" was made to Bata as a brand in the main trailer of the motion picture.
The footwear company had said that "the brand Bata has been deliberately shown in an extremely bad taste and the dialogue was intended to convey that Bata is adorned only by lower strata of society and one should feel humiliated if one wears Bata footwear".
The court had said that a prima facie case for commission of offence punishable under sections 499 (defamation), 500 (punishment for defamation) and 120 B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC was made out and there are adequate grounds for proceeding against every one of the accused in the case.