A petition has been filed in the Madras High Court seeking an interim stay on the release of Ramgopal Verma's multi-lingual film "Killing Veerappan", based on the operation leading to the killing of the dreaded forest brigand, on the grounds it is full of "false information."
Citing the trailer of the film released recently, petitioner Paneerselvi of a village in Salem district alleged that the "entire movie is filled up with false information which is nothing but creating law and order problems in Tamil Nadu."
Seeking a a direction to the state Home Secretary and the Censor Board's regional office to file a report with regard to issue of "U" certificate to the film, she sought an interim injunction on the release of the film, set for January 1.
The petitioner claimed that the director of the film, produced by Sivaprakash in various languages including Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi, degraded Tamils, speficically women, and depicted that Karnataka police alone had taken all steps to curb the menace of the sandalwood smuggler who was killed in 2004 in a joint operation by the two states.
The petitioner further submitted that the movie falsely depicted the wife of Veerappan as having killed several persons.
The film director had visualised some "negative" images about Tamil Nadu police and politicians, she charged.
Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Sanjay Jain, appearing
for CBFC, had earlier told the court that the board has certified the movie after considering all aspects and nothing offensive towards the community was found.
The ASG had said that under the Cinematograph Act, only the producers can challenge the Board's order in the appellate tribunal and the petitioner cannot do so in the instant case.
The producers, Viacom 18, and the film's director had opposed the plea saying there was no public interest in it and nor did the movie make fun of the community.
They had opposed maintainability of the plea saying the DSGMC had on March 8 sent them a notice seeking change in the film's name, taking down of its posters and demanding Rs 100 crore as damages, but not a word was mentioned that the movie should not be released.
They had also contended that the posters were removed in view of the objections of the petitioner.
DSGMC in its petition had sought stay on the release of the film contending that it "misrepresented" the community and projected "the personality of the community in defamatory and denigrating manner" which could cause "disturbance".
