New Delhi: A complaint was lodged at a court in Muzaffarpur, Bihar on Wednesday against actor Anupam Kher and others associated with the film The Accidental Prime Minister, alleging that several public figures have been lampooned in the movie.
Advocate Sudhir Kumar Ojha filed the petition before the chief judicial magistrate’s court here and it has been listed for hearing on January 8 before sub-divisional judicial magistrate (west) Gaurab Kamal.
Besides Kher, who has essayed the role of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the movie, others named in the complaint include actor Akshaye Khanna who plays noted journalist Sanjay Baru – a media adviser to the ex-prime minister on whose book the movie is said to have been based.
Actors and actresses who have played the roles of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Congress president Rahul Gandhi – then the party’s national general secretary – and Priyanka Vadra have also been named in the petition alongside the movie’s producer and director.
Ojha has alleged that he felt “hurt” upon viewing the promos of the movie, set for release on January 11, on TV channels and YouTube.
He also claimed that the film projects the country and a host of its political leaders, ranging from RJD supremo Lalu Prasad and BSP chief Mayawati to former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his deputy Lal Krishna Advani, in a very poor light.
The petition was filed under IPC sections 295, 153, 153A , 293, 504 and 120B relating to promoting enmity between different groups, sale of obscene objects, insult with intent to provoke breach of peace and criminal conspiracy.
Last week, when the trailer of the film was released, the Youth Congress in Maharashtra had raised objections and said it wanted ‘veto power’ over the films contents. However, the Congress leadership later seems to have decided that the film was best ignored. In a tweet, Maharashtra Youth Congress chief Satyajeet Tambe Patil said he had withdrawn his demand for a special screening since “it is now evident that [the movie] is BJP’s propaganda/campaign movie”.
The film, based on Baru’s book by the same name, deals with Singh’s stint as the prime minister from 2004 to 2014. It also features former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, present party head Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi as characters.
Kher plays Manmohan Singh in the film, while German actor Suzanne Bernert will be seen as Sonia Gandhi.
The film is directed by Vijay R. Gutte, son of Ratnakar Gutte, an MLA from the BJP-allied Rashtriya Samaj Paksha. In August Vijay was arrested by the Directorate General of Goods and Services Tax Intelligence for a Rs 34-crore GST fraud.
Congress has in the past accused the Gutte family of siphoning off over Rs 300 crores as part of a sugar factory scam which involved fraudulently taking loans worth the same amount in the names of farmers without their knowledge and later diverting it to films.
(With PTI inputs)