Jolly LLB 2: HC orders 4 ‘defamatory’ scenes to be snipped

Less than a week before the scheduled release of Akshay Kumar-starrer Jolly LLB 2, the Bombay high court on Monday observed that a few scenes in the film “defame” the judiciary and accordingly ordered that four such scenes from the movie be “cut.”

Following the same, Subhash Kapoor, the film’s director, gave a statement to the court that he will remove/modify these scenes and dialogues.

Both the order and Kapoor’s undertaking follow a plea filed in the HC by a local advocate.

Kapoor’s statement is based on the ‘findings’ and recommendation of the three-member expert committee that the court had ordered to be constituted to ascertain if the movie was indeed defamatory to the judiciary and whether it warranted contempt action against the film makers, as sought by the petitioner.

Two senior counsels RN Dhorde and VN Dixit, and the chief medical officer of the Aurangabad bench Dr Prakash R Kanade (to represent a member of the society who is not in the legal profession) were appointed.

They “sat in the debate hall of Taj Vivanta, Aurangabad on February 3 to review the film”, and submitted its report in court on Monday.

The report says the committee found four scenes in the movie that either through visuals or through dialogues “involve defamation of the body of lawyers…and tend to disgrace or undermine the dignity of lawyers and courts.”

These objectionable scenes that the court now wants snipped include one in which a lawyer jumps over the judge’s dais and the judge ducks behind his dais and delivers his order while crouching down.

The lawyer approaches the judge’s dais, has a dialogue with him and thereafter signals to his client, immediately after which the client hurls a shoe at the judge.

As per Kapoor’s undertaking, “the jumping on and off the dais” will be removed though the “dialogue between the judge and the protagonist will be retained”.

Also, the scene with the shoe hurling will have to be modified. Now, “the modified scene will still show the litigant venting his frustration. However, the shoe will not be thrown directly at the judge, or land on the judge’s table.”

The objectionable signalling and the dialogue that follow, where another lawyer says to the lawyer in question, “Kya akkal ladaai hai,” will have to be snipped because the committee and the court believe that this signifies that the entire court proceeding had been “fixed”.

Incidentally, the plea was filed solely on the basis of the trailer of the movie that had been released for public viewing. Among its many objections, were some scenes that showed lawyers playing cards and dancing in the court premises, thus, “maligning the reputation of the Indian legal profession.”

The producers on the other hand had approached the Supreme Court against the committee’s constitution arguing that they had already been granted a U/A certificate by the CBFC.