Kangana Ranaut seeks transfer of her cross complaint against Javed Akhtar to another Magistrate

Bollywood actress Kangana Ranaut has approached a Mumbai Court seeking permission to withdraw her criminal complaint against lyricist Javed Akhtar for extortion and refer the same to another competent Magistrate..Ranaut had earlier filed a plea before Chief Metropolitan Magistrate at Esplanade seeking transfer of Akhtar's criminal complaint from the Andheri court currently hearing the case, to any other Magistrate.The Esplanade court had dismissed that plea.Pursuant to that dismissal, Ranaut filed this second transfer application through Rizwan Siddiquee & Associates seeking transfer of her cross complaint which was posted for hearing before the same Magistrate RR Khan who was also adjudicating the Akhtar’s defamation complaint.In her plea, Ranaut stated that the offence initiated against her was "bailable, non-cognizable and compoundable".Despite being aware of the same, the Andheri court on "every given opportunity" sought to "misuse his powers and cause injury" to Ranaut even before the commencement of trial."Magistrate is intentionally causing prejudice to the rights and liberties of the Applicant with a biased mind," the plea said..The transfer plea came up for hearing before Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate ST Dande when Akhtar's counsel Jay K Bharadwaj contended that the grounds on which Ranaut was seeking transfer of the second complaint was similar to the first transfer plea which had already been dismissed..Akhtar in his response, also submitted that the petition was not maintainable since it had not even been heard by Judge Khan yet.Hence, the present plea was filed on “mere assumptions” and “personal conceptions” which had no legal basis.The reply stated that the law on hearing of cross complaints had clearly been laid out by the Supreme Court which stated that “the cases have to be tried in the same court even if the set of allegations are different”..After hearing the short submissions, judge Dande posted the application for further hearing on November 26, 2021..In her cross complaint, Ranaut had raised allegations against Akhtar of criminal conspiracy and outraging modesty by invading in her privacy through her criminal complaint.She sought issuance of process against Akhtar under Sections 383, 384, 387 (extortion), 503, 506 (criminal intimidation) and 509 (outraging modesty of woman) of the Indian Penal Code..The complaint was filed as a counter to the criminal defamation complaint filed by Akhtar against Ranaut claiming that her statements aired on Republic TV amounted to the offence of criminal defamation under Sections 499 and 500 of the Indian Penal Code.