The Telangana High Court on Thursday questioned the objections raised by Satyam Computers founder B Ramalinga Raju’s counsel, who sought a ban on the docuseries Bad Boy Billionaires produced by OTT platform Netflix. The court found fault with the objections raised against the release of the series and asked what was wrong in a filmmaker trying to make a film on a man convicted of committing a huge corporate fraud.
The Bench comprising Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and Justice A Abhishek Reddy also observed that the Hyderabad civil court should have first watched the episode of Ramalinga Raju before passing an injunction against its release. Just a day before the series’ release, the civil court had stayed it. The series was scheduled to release on Netflix on September 2.
“A writer would attempt to do a psychoanalysis of a character. Like Roman historian Suetonius. How was Caesar different from his predecessors? He did a psychoanalysis. Most of his decisions. Both good ones and bad ones... Psychoanalysis of a character is very important to estimate why a person behaved in a particular way,” the Times of India quoted the Bench as saying.
According to Deccan Chronicle, the court asked as to how an individual could oppose and block views or opinions of himself based on information available in public domain. The court said that anybody can form their opinions based on information available in the public domain and have a right to express it.
Responding to the observation of the court, senior counsel Niranjan argued that though Raju was convicted in Satyam case, he has appealed against the trial court judgment and some of the cases filed by Enforcement Directorate were still at a trial stage and said that the docuseries would tarnish his image and cause prejudice against Ramalinga Raju.
Niranjan said that though Ramalinga Raju gave consent to the filmmakers, he grew suspicious after seeing the trailer that spoke about greed, corruption, fraud and cooking of books. The counsel also objected to the attempt to equate Raju with billionaires who fled the country. The trailer features Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi, who left the country after allegedly cheating banks.
The next hearing in the case will be on October 5.