In a major move, the Madras High Court has denied bail to all six accused involved in leaking Chief Minister Vijay's yet-to-be-released film Jana Nayagan, which has been stuck in a limbo due to censor certificate-related issues.
Justice R Sakthivel rejected all the bail pleas after the prosecution strongly argued against granting bail, citing the gravity of the offence, reported The Hindu. The prosecution informed the court that the film had been illegally circulated and watched by lakhs of viewers even before its official release and prior to receiving certification from the CBFC.
The court was informed that the cyber crime wing had filed a FIR against 21 individuals following a complaint by R Udayakumar, the production controller of KVN Productions, which had reportedly invested crores of rupees in producing the film.
According to the investigation, freelance editor S Prashanth had access to an editing suite while working on Soori's upcoming film Mandaadi. Police alleged that he abused this access to illegally copy footage of Jana Nayagan onto his hard drive.
Investigators further stated that Prashanth later watched the film with his brothers, S Selvam, the second accused and an employee at a prominent textile showroom, and S Rajini, the fourth accused, who works as a lawyer. The second accused allegedly shared the film with a colleague, who has been named as the third accused.
The government counsel also argued that a third accused D Uma Shankar who serving as purchase manager in the textile showroom, is absconding despite his anticipatory bail being dismissed by the court. The seventh accused in the case was J Balakrishnan who uploaded the Jana Nayagan footage on a Google Drive which was later widely downloaded and shared. Some of the accused had also sold the copy to piracy websites like Tamil Rockers and Tamil Movies.
At present, four bail petitions had been filed by nine accused individuals. However, the counsel appearing for the first, second, and seventh accused chose not to pursue bail, as all three had already been detained under the Goondas Act. As a result, bail was sought only for the remaining six accused. But the court rejected all of them for sharing the leaked footages widely.
Appearing on behalf of KVN Productions, advocate Vijayan Subramanian argued that the production company had incurred substantial financial losses due to the offence and contended that bail should not be granted.
Jana Nayagan, which was set for release during Pongal this year, was set to be Vijay's final film before he took a full-fledged entry to politics. The film's release was marred by censor-related issues and the leak itself which came as a major setback for the makers. The film did not see the light of the day till the assembly elections where Vijay contested in all the 234 constituencies and won 108 of them. He formed a coalition government and recently took oath as the Chief Minister.
