The Bombay High Court has quashed a 12-year-old FIR against programming heads and media executives of a Marathi television channel over an alleged objectionable dialogue in a serial, holding that they had no role in its creation.
The case stemmed from an episode of the serial 'Laxmi versus Saraswati', which allegedly contained a dialogue insulting to the Scheduled Caste community.
The FIR was originally registered in 2013 at the Wada police station in Maharashtra’s Thane district, following a complaint by one Rahul Gaikwad.
The complainant alleged that during an episode aired on August 22, 2012, a character used the words “mahara-poranchi” in the context of warding off the “evil eye”. It was argued that these words were used intentionally to humiliate members of the Mahar community, a Scheduled Caste.
The petitioners, including the programming head of ‘Star Pravah’ and Star Entertainment Media Pvt. Ltd., argued that they were not the content creators and had no role in the dialogue delivery, which they claimed was an “impromptu” utterance by the actor.
