The court observed that most of the people who were making comments against “Churuli” had not seen the movie in full.
The Kerala High Court on Thursday dismissed a writ petition seeking a directive to remove Malayalam film “Churuli” from the OTT platform alleging that dialogues used in the film are smutty.Justice P.V. Kunhikrishnan observed that the State Police Chief clearly stated in his statement that there was no statutory violation of any rules and no criminal offence was made out in exhibiting the movie “Churuli”. In such circumstances, this Court could not direct the removal of the movie “Churuli” from the OTT platform.The court said that , the court could not direct to remove the movie from the OTT on a simple observation that the movie contained foul language or obscene language.A reading of the writ petition itself would show that the intention of the petitioner was only publicity, the court added.The court also observed that making wrong comments on social media about an artistic creation, even without watching the creation, was to be deprecated. In fact, It was the duty of the State Police Chief and his subordinates to protect the artistic freedom of a filmmaker by initiating appropriate proceedings including criminal cases, if any criminal offence was made out in such a situation. The State Police Chief would give strict directions to his subordinates to take appropriate action in accordance to law, if such complaints are received.The court observed that most of the people who were making comments against “Churuli” had not seen the movie in full. “Probably they may be relying on certain video clips received on Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter, etc. to make comments. There is indeed freedom ofspeech and expression to every citizen as per Article 19 (1)(a) of the Constitution of India. But the above types of critics will bedoing an injustice to a filmmaker by making comment about a film and making it an unpopular one without watching his movie in full. I can understand a criticism about a movie after watching the movie in full. But, without watching the movie, making comments alleging that it is a bad film, will hurt the filmmakers and artists”.TheState Police Chief had also filed a report of a special team constituted following a directive by the High Court to view the film and find out whether the screening of the film on an OTT platform had violated any statutory law or amounted to criminal offence.The court noted the report of the Special Team pointed out that the “centre of action” in the movie was an illegal arrack brewing centre deep inside the forest. The characters in the movie due to their living conditions and circumstances were forced to speak in “rough and tough language with expletives and cuss words in their day- to -day interactions”.The filmmaker used a language, which, according to his artistic view, was used by the people in “Churuli”. In order to make the movie believable and for the audience to fully appreciate the life and culture of the character, the filmmakers use such language.The persons living in such conditions could not be expected to speak in a decent language used by people residing in a normal area. Nobody could dictate a filmmaker to use only decent language in his film, the report filed by the special team said.