3 months ago
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The shaper of The Kerala Story 2 – Goes Beyond has told the Kerala High Court that the pleas opposing the film's release were “premature, misconceived and not maintainable.”
The submission was made by the film's shaper Vipul Amrutlal Shah successful an affidavit filed successful the High Court connected Tuesday (February 24, 2026).
On Wednesday, Justice Bechu Kurian Thomas said helium would perceive the petitions successful item astatine 3 pm.
Mr. Shah, successful his affidavit, has besides contended that the censor board, Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), was the sole adept authorization constituted nether the Cinematograph Act, 1952, to analyse films successful their entirety and certify them for nationalist exhibition.
"The supervisory jurisdiction of this tribunal does not widen to substituting its ain appraisal of a film's contented for the adept judgement of the certifying authority," helium said successful his affidavit.
He has besides denied the allegations successful the pleas against the movie and termed them arsenic "an maltreatment and misuse of the process of law".
Referring to the plea by the archetypal petitioner – Sreedev Namboodiri of Kannavam successful Kannur territory – Mr. Shah has claimed that it was filed "with a malafide volition and an ulterior motive to summation fiscal benefits from him".
The shaper has said that the teasers of the movie were released 16 days earlier the filing of the plea.
He has besides said that accumulation of a certified movie cannot beryllium restrained connected the ground of a two-minute teaser alone, without immoderate introspection of the implicit film.
He has besides said that granting anterior restraint astatine the threshold without examining the implicit film, without immoderate prima facie uncovering of ineligible infirmity successful the CBFC's decision, and connected the ground of a teaser "would beryllium to sojourn catastrophic and irreversible economical harm upon the responsive (producer), thousands of exhibitors, and organisation partners crossed the country".
"The said movie is slated to merchandise successful implicit 1,800 theatres crossed India arsenic good arsenic overseas," Mr. Shah claimed.
Regarding the film's title, helium has said the qualifier 'Goes Beyond' successful the film's sanction was "not decorative".
"It is simply a deliberate and conspicuous textual signal, prominently displayed successful the teaser astatine aggregate timestamps, that the film's communicative extends beyond the geography of Kerala. The definite nonfiction 'The' successful the rubric is simply a notation to the archetypal movie successful the franchise and does not restrict the film's taxable substance to Kerala alone," the affidavit has claimed.
He besides said that if determination was an apprehension of mob enactment oregon protestation affecting nationalist order, it was for the authorities to instrumentality steps to forestall the aforesaid and cannot effect successful stopping the merchandise of a film.
"A script wherever immoderate idiosyncratic oregon radical tin efficaciously veto the accumulation of a certified movie simply by threatening upset would render meaningless some the CBFC certification process and the law warrant of escaped expression," the affidavit said.
The tribunal had connected Tuesday orally observed that the teaser and trailers of the movie depicts a State similar Kerala wherever “everyone lives successful communal harmony successful a incorrect light.”
The tribunal had besides observed that utilizing the State's sanction and claiming the movie is based connected facts tin pb to communal tensions successful the State.
The 3 abstracted pleas person sought to quash the certificate for nationalist viewing granted to the film, which is scheduled to beryllium released connected February 27.
