Journalist Coomi Kapoor is suing the producers of Kangana Ranaut’s film Emergency and streaming platform Netflix for alleged breach of contract and defamation.
Kapoor, the author of the nonfiction book The Emergency: A Personal History, has alleged that Ranaut’s Manikarnika Films Private Limited used her name and her book to promote the film without her prior approval. Kapoor said the movie was a “total distortion of the contents of her book”.
Emergency is a political drama set around the 1970s when Indira Gandhi was prime minister. BJP MP Ranaut plays Gandhi, and is also the film’s director and co-producer along with Zee Studios, Renu Pitti and others. According to a press note issued by Kapoor, whose book was published in 2017, she had signed a tripartite contract with Manikarnika Films and Penguin in 2021.
The press note said the contract had included two clauses to ensure “nothing should be modified that was not in consonance with historical facts on the subject which are in the public domain” and that the “author’s name and book should not be used for promoting or exploiting the film without the prior approval of the author in writing”.
Initially scheduled for release on September 6, 2024, Emergency finally hit the theatres in January after around 13 cuts and changes by the censor board. The film had faced opposition from Sikh groups over its depiction of separatist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.
When the film began streaming on Netflix on March 17, Kapoor said she “discovered to her horror that in large type it was claimed the film was based on her book”.
The press note also said the movie on Netflix includes the phrasing “based on Coomi Kapoor’s book The Emergency” even though Kapoor sent “two legal notices” about it. (The movie on Netflix also says it’s based on the book Priyadarshini by Jaiyanth Vasanth Sinha.) “The damage to her reputation as a journalist and author is irretrievable,” the press note said of Kapoor.
‘Creative liberties’
The Telegraph reported that Kapoor’s lawyers sent a legal notice to Manikarnika Films and Netflix on April 3. It’s unclear when the second notice was sent. In the April 3 notice, Kapoor flagged that the movie’s script hadn’t been shared with her despite follow-up messages. The notice also outlined six “historical inaccuracies” in the movie.
Kapoor told the newspaper: “They told me they were doing a movie on Indira Gandhi. I gave it to them. That’s my stupidity, because they said we are only using one chapter. The contents are from all chapters. Indira Gandhi’s life is in the public domain. Don’t cite the book and present wrong facts.”
Kapoor alleged that the film accused Akbar Ahmed, a friend of Sanjay Gandhi’s, of “inspiring the ban on Kishore Kumar’s songs on AIR [All India Radio]” even though Ahmed had not been in India during that period. She said she had to explain to Ahmed that “in her book it was clearly mentioned that it was then Information and Broadcasting Minister V C Shukla who had banned Kishore Kumar’s songs on AIR and not him”, the note said. She said Ahmed was one of the many people who complained to her about the “inaccuracies” in the film and held her accountable as the “source of material”.
According to The Telegraph, Manikarnika Films on April 10 “countered the allegations”. It said it wasn’t obliged to get the script approved by Kapoor, since her book wasn’t the only reference for the film. The production house also said “creative liberties would be exercised to make necessary modifications to the subject story and screenplay” and that Kapoor had given them “absolute and complete intellectual property rights”.
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