Supreme Court bench comprised of Chief Justice U.U. Lalit and Justice Bela M. Trivedi dismissed a writ petition asking for a ban on Mirzapur 2. Petition stated that the government should create a pre-screening committee for web series, movies, and other programming that were likely to be released on online platforms.
CJI Lalit said that there were a lot of issues that needed to be investigated before anything posted to OTT platforms on the internet could be pre-screened. He emphasized that even though the viewers or the exhibition were in India, the transmission in these circumstances wasn’t from India and, in the majority of cases, it was from another country.
The plea made by Rudra Vikram Singh, a Supreme Court advocate and native of Mirzapur, the apex court served notice on the show’s producers and directors and requested a response for allegedly maligning the city in the web series.
According to Singh, the Mirzapur district has been portrayed as a haven for criminals and mafias. He asserted that the web series’ portrayal of the residents of Mirzapur as mafias caused an unfavourable perception of them, which had an impact on his work and social life.
The petitioner mentioned its first issue of banning the OTT series Mirzapur, and stated that already two seasons have been released and another one is about to be released. The court stated that the petitioner needs to update its facts on record in order to ban the series.
The petition also stated the government’s certification to be made necessary prior to the release of any web series on an internet platform. The petition aimed to develop rules for censoring films that are released online as equally censored before being distributed in theatres and at the box office.
It has also stated an investigation should be carried out in accordance with the Indecent Representation of Women Prohibition Act of 1986, the Cinematography Act, and the Information Technology Act of 2000 against Excel Entertainment, Amazon Prime Video, and the actors who appeared in the web series Mirzapur.
