HC quashes FIR against Suriya in Jai Bhim case

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court on Thursday quashed a case pending against actor Suriya Sivakumar and director TJ Gnanavel for allegedly making scenes in a way hurting the sentiments of a section in the Tamil movie Jai Bhim.

Justice N Sathish Kumar passed the direction on disposing of a petition filed by Suriya and Gnanavel. The petitioners prayed for quashing the FIR and submitted that they did not hurt anyone's sentiments.

"As a few objected to a particular scene in the movie, we removed those portions from our motion picture. Therefore, the order by a judicial magistrate to file FIR against is against the law, " the petitioners submitted.

The petitioners also submitted that they had not depicted any community in poor light in the movie. Meanwhile, the complainant, named Santhosh, president of Rudra Vanniyar Sena, filed an impleading petition against the criminal-original petition of Suriya and others.

The complainant claimed that the makers of Jai Bhim had put a scene showing the 'Agni Kundam' - an insignia of the Vanniyar caste in the house of the antagonist and the character's name was also the same as one of their demised leaders.

Nevertheless, the judge concurred with the submissions of Suriya and Gnanavel and quashed the FIR filed by the Velachery police in May 2022.

When the complainant filed a complaint with Velachery police, no action was taken on it. Therefore, he approached Saidapet Judicial Magistrate and got a direction to Velachery police to register FIR against Suriya, Gnanavel, and others.