KGF Song Copyright Violation: Karnataka HC refuses to quash FIR against Rahul Gandhi, Jairam Ramesh & Supriya Shrinate

On June 28, the Karnataka High Court refused to quash MRT Music’s FIR against Disqualified Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh and Supriya Shrinate over alleged copyright infringement by using the song from the movie ‘KGF Chapter 2’ in the promotional video for ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra.’

The court’s single-judge bench, comprising Justice M Nagaprasanna, observed, “Petitioner appeared to have tampered with source code, which would amount to infringement. Copyright of complainant is taken for granted and therefore prima facie all this requires investigation.” The court heard the arguments and reserved the order on June 23.

The accused’s counsel Senior Advocate Vikram Huilgol argued that Section 63 of the Copyright Act has a heightened threshold of infringement. He submitted, “The question of infringement at large itself is before the civil court. They have preferred a suit under section 55.” The counsel further said, “All that A3 (Rahul Gandhi) has admittedly done has walked or portrayed to be walking with the music in the background. By being portrayed in a video, would that amount to A3 knowingly infringing a copyright? Onus in Section 63 is to show that person knowingly infringed the copyright.”

Meanwhile, the complainant’s counsels argued that the accused had taken the source code, meddled with it and superimposed the video. The counsel submitted, “The Act provides for civil remedy and criminal prosecution, in the case of such infringement the outcome of one does not depend upon the outcome of other, subject to all just exceptions.”

The complainant’s counsel further contended that if the accused are claiming that they were ignorant about audio or video being used, then “this is something which they have to establish in the due process.” The counsel further said, “It is not only audio in the background that is used, here is a case where everything of my work is used, font, lyrics, animation, only the logo is changed,” referring to Section 2(f) of the Copyright Act.

Earlier, on December 16, 2022, the Karnataka High Court’s single-judge bench, comprising Justice Sunil Dutt Yadav, granted an interim stay on further investigation against the accused. The accused’s counsel argued that the complainant’s filed the FIR with the “intention to involve prominent personalities for political gain.”