Kangana Ranaut's Plea to Transfer Extortion Case Against Javed Akhtar from Magistrate Court Rejected

Kangana Ranaut’s plea seeking transfer of her ‘extortion’ complaint against veteran lyricist Javed Akhtar out of the magistrate’s court was rejected on Saturday by a court of the chief metropolitan magistrate (CMM) in Mumbai’s suburban Andheri. Kangana had filed a counter complaint against Akhtar, who is pursuing a criminal defamation case against her.

In her complaint before the magistrate court, the Bollywood actress had accused Akhtar of “extortion and criminal intimidation”. The actor, through her lawyer Rizwan Siddiquee, had approached the CMM for transferring this case, saying she “lost faith” in the magistrate court.

In her petition, Ranaut had claimed that the court of the metropolitan magistrate had indirectly threatened her of issuing a warrant if she failed to appear before it in a bailable offence. Akhtar had last week moved a plea seeking issuance of a non-bailable warrant against Kangana the criminal defamation case filed by him against her. The application, moved by Akhtar’s lawyer Jay Bharadwaj, listed the number of exemptions Ranaut has sought for one reason or another since March this year.

The court has kept the application pending and asked Kangana’s lawyer to file their reply on January 4, the next date of hearing. The court also directed her lawyer to ensure the actor’s presence on the next hearing.

In October, the CMM court had rejected her plea seeking transfer of the defamation case filed by Akhtar against her to another court. The court had held that the Andheri metropolitan magistrate, hearing the defamation case against Ranaut, acted “judiciously” and hasn’t shown any bias against the actor.

Akhtar (76) had filed a complaint in the Andheri court in November last year, claiming that Ranaut had made defamatory statements against him in a television interview, which allegedly damaged his reputation.

(With PTI inputs)

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