The Indore Bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court (HC) has dismissed a petition to restrain the release of the film ‘Haq’, which draws inspiration from the Shah Bano case in which the Supreme Court ruled in favour of giving maintenance to divorced Muslim women. The petition against the movie was filed by Shah Bano Begum’s daughter, Siddiqua Begum Khan, contending that the film distorted personal events that took place in Shah Bano’s life. The Emraan Hashmi, Yami Gautam starrer film is set to release on November 7.
Siddiqua said that the movie commercially exploits the privacy and personality of her deceased mother without taking consent from her legal heirs. She added that she had inherited her late mother’s reputational rights after Bano’s death. Justice Pranay Verma has rejected these arguments, holding, “privacy or reputation earned by a person during his or her lifetime extinguishes with his or her death. It cannot be inherited like a movable or immovable property.” The Court further accepted the filmmaker’s stance that the film is only inspired by the Supreme Court case but is otherwise fictional and that a disclaimer about this is also part of the movie.
“Since the disclaimer itself states that the same is dramatisation and is fictional and an adaptation of a book and is inspired by a judgment of the Supreme Court, it cannot be said that the contents of the film are fabricated. Since the film is an inspiration and a fiction, some amount of leeway is certainly permissible and merely because the same is done, it cannot be said that there has been any sensationalisation or false portrayal,” the Court said, adding that the film is stated to be largely inspired from publicly available court records.
