New Delhi, June 12
The Supreme Court today dismissed two PIL petitions for ban on Hollywood movie ''The Da Vinci Code'', which has already been prohibited by five states on the ground that it hurt the sentiments of Christians and can create a law and order problem.
Rejecting the petitions of All-India Christians Welfare Association (AICWA) and North India Cathedral Churches’ member Mathews, a Bench of Mr Justice Arijit Pasayat and Mr Justice Altamas Kabir said the remedy was not under Article 32 (right to file PIL) but “somewhere else”, which the court apparently meant executive wing of the government.
The fives states, which have banned the screening of the movie based on Dan Brown’s controversial but best-seller novel of the same name, included Punjab, Goa, Tamil Nadu and Nagaland.
The court dismissed the petitions after the counsel for the petitioners failed to name even a single country with Christianity as the dominant religion, having banned the movie when the Bench put a specific query to them about it.
The advocates appearing for the petitioners could not also gave a satisfactory reply to another query as to what formed the basis for seeking the ban.
The court said the movie had been cleared by the censor board. If some body was not satisfied with the board’s decision then there was a mechanism of approaching the appellate authority against it.
“When the book (The Da Vinci Code) released by publishers in 2003 says that it was not based on facts but was a work of fiction, then why you have any objection to the movie,” the Judges observed, pointing out that even the petitioners had admitted that it was a “fiction”.
The court further explained that if any book or film based on fiction still created a religious problem or hurt the sentiments of the believers of that religion, even then the remedy would not lie under Article 32 to file a PIL.
When AICWA counsel said there was no policy laid down by the government to deal with issues of religious controversies arising out of any work of art, the Bench said it was not the duty of the court to tell the executive
which policy it should frame or not.
