Supreme
Court has refused to entertain an appeal by Netflix challenging a Bihar local
court’s order which restrained it from using Sahara Group chairman Subrata
Roy’s name in its upcoming web series ‘Bad Boy Billionaires’.

Last week, a
local court in Bihar’s Araria district passed an interim stay order on the
broadcasting of Netflix documentary ‘Bad Boy Billionaires’, following a
petition from Sahara chief Subrata Roy. The documentary was scheduled to be
released on September 2.

A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde, however, granted liberty to Netflix to approach the Patna High Court against the order passed by a lower court at Araria, Bihar.

“Dismissed. We are sorry,” the bench said while rejecting the appeal.

Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Netflix, told the bench that several petitions pertaining to the web series are pending in various high courts and the apex court should transfer these matters to itself.

The bench issued notice on the separate petitions filed by Netflix seeking transfer of the matters pending before different high courts.

Senior advocate Vikas Singh, appearing for Sahara India, opposed the Netflix plea and said that the order was passed by a civil judge and an appeal would lie before the district judge and not before the high court or the apex court.

The trailer
of the documentary has been removed from the streaming platform, Netflix.
However, it is still available on YouTube.

Earlier, The
Delhi High Court had dismissed a plea by Mehul Choksi, an accused in the
nearly USD 2 billion Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam, to conduct pre-screening
of the documentary.

Justice
Navin Chawla, after hearing the matter for over two hours, declined to grant
relief to Choksi saying a writ petition for enforcement of a private right
cannot be maintainable. The court said his remedy lies in a civil suit and
granted him the liberty to raise the issue in a civil suit.

Also
read: A
peek into luxurious lives of Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi in Netflix show ‘Bad Boy
Billionaires’

Choksi, the
promoter of Gitanjali Gems, and his nephew Nirav Modi are the main accused in
the Rs 13,500 crore PNB fraud case. He left the country last year and was
granted citizenship by Antigua and Barbuda.

The
documentary, ‘Bad Boy Billionaires’ is described on the Netflix platform as,
“This investigative docuseries explores the greed, fraud, and corruption that
built-up – and ultimately brought down – India’s most infamous tycoons”.