A Bengaluru court granted an ex parte temporary injunction restricting the publication or circulation of false, malicious, defamatory, or derogatory content on Kannada actor Yash’s upcoming film Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups.
The order was passed on an interim application filed by Toxic’s producers KVN Productions, which also sought a permanent injunction against a number of defendants, including X Corp and “John Doe @ Ashok Kumar,” referring to an unidentified person.
The producers sought an order restraining the defendants from communicating, publishing, circulating, sharing, posting, streaming, providing access to, or otherwise communicating through any medium any “false, malicious, defamatory, derogatory” news concerning the film, either before or after its release.
Unlike some previous injunctions obtained by film producers in Karnataka, the order in this case does not expressly restrain reviews or criticism of the film. Earlier orders sought to restrict a much broader range of online content, including reviews, videos, reactions, trolling, and even “challenging feedback”.
The court found a prima facie case in favour of the producers and determined that the balance of convenience (a doctrine relied on by courts to decide whether to grant interim injunctions) also lay with it after examining the plaint, documents, and interim application.
The court said an injunction could be granted as an interim measure for a limited period, observing that otherwise the purpose of filing the suit could be defeated and lead to multiple proceedings.
The temporary injunction will remain in force until the next hearing on September 28. The court directed the producers to comply with Order 39 Rule 3A of the Code of Civil Procedure and furnish copies of the plaint, documents, and interim application to the defendants.
Order 39 Rule 3A requires courts to endeavour to finally dispose of an application for an ex parte injunction within 30 days from the date the injunction was granted. If this is not possible, the court must record reasons for the delay.
The court also directed the producers to cooperate in disposing of the interim application within 30 days of any one of the defendants appearing. It clarified that the injunction cannot be used for any purpose other than the one for which it was granted (which is to restrain from publishing/circulating false, malicious, defamatory, or derogatory content) and said it would stand vacated if the plaintiff failed to comply with the conditions.
Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups, directed by Geetu Mohandas and starring Yash, is an action drama set in Goa between the 1940s and the 1970s. The multilingual film also stars Nayanthara, Kiara Advani, Huma Qureshi, Tara Sutaria, and Rukmini Vasanth.
The film is scheduled for worldwide theatrical release on August 26.
The order comes amid a growing trend of film producers approaching courts in Karnataka for broad ex parte John Doe injunctions ahead of releases. TNM previously reported how several Kannada and Telugu films obtained such orders, some of which sought to restrict a wide range of online content, including reviews, videos, reactions, trolling, and even “challenging feedback”. Read our earlier report here. In several cases, BookMyShow, the ticketing platform, also removed the reviews feature from its platform.