Case against Rajini’s ‘Enthiran’ posted to September 28 for final hearing
CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has posted the civil suit relating to Tamil feature film ‘Enthiran’ in which superstar Rajinikanth acted in the leading role, for final hearing on September 28.
Justice M Nirmal Kumar had imposed a cost of `10,000 on S Shankar, the director of the film, for not appearing before him, on September 3 last.
The other defendant in the case is Kalanithi Maran of Sun TV group. Originally, Aarur Tamil Nadan approached the court eight years ago, claiming that Shankar and Kalanithi Maran had produced the film in 2010 based on his story published and registered in 1996. He had penned a robot story ‘Jugiba’. This was first published in the Tamil magazine ‘Iniya Udayam’ in April 1996 and later it was published as a novel ‘Tik Tik Deepika’ in 2007. The story line was registered on January 1, 1997 and protected under the provisions of the Copyright Act, 1957. He saw the film in October 2010 after its release and was shocked to note that his story was copied by the film crew.
The film was released in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and other languages and made a huge profit from various sources. He sought a damage of `one crore from Shankar, Maran and Sun Pictures. When the matter came up for hearing on Thursday, petitioner’s counsel K Elangovan submitted that a criminal case on the same issue was pending for nearly eight years. The film crew had copied his client’s story, which had been protected under the Copyright Act. He has also produced a copy of the story and the Copy Right document.
