A sessions court denied Kangana Ranaut’s motion to have the defamation lawsuit brought against her by lyricist Javed Akhtar transferred from the magistrate’s court in suburban Andheri to the sessions court. The judge also declined to transfer her counter-complaint against Akhtar, which she had filed in Andheri, to a different court.
The second extra principal and sessions judge (Dindoshi) S S Oza’s complete order was not immediately accessible.
In her plea, Ranaut claimed that the 10th Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court (Andheri) had shown “bias and prejudice towards her” by refusing to give her a permanent exemption from appearance and threatening to issue an arrest warrant for a “bailable and non-cognizable misdemeanour.”
A similar request had been dismissed by the chief metropolitan magistrate (CMM) in October 2021, thus she went to the sessions court.
In November 2020, Akhtar (76) filed a suit with the Andheri magistrate, stating that Ranaut made defamatory allegations about him in a television interview, causing him to lose his job. Ranaut dragged his name for no cause when discussing the presence of a “coterie” in Bollywood in the wake of actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s suspected suicide in June 2020, according to Akhtar’s criminal defamation case.
In turn, Ranaut filed a counter-complaint against Akhtar in the Andheri court, citing “extortion and criminal intimidation.”
Following a public disagreement with a co-star, Ranaut claims that Akhtar summoned her and her sister Rangoli Chandel to his home and “criminally intimidated and threatened” them. The charge was refuted by Akhtar.
