Mumbai court dismisses plea by Kangana Ranaut seeking transfer of cross complaint against Javed Akhtar

A Mumbai court on Saturday rejected the plea filed by actress Kangana Ranaut seeking permission to withdraw her criminal complaint against lyricist Javed Akhtar for extortion and refer the same to another competent Magistrate..Ranaut filed a transfer application through Rizwan Siddiquee & Associates seeking the transfer of her cross complaint which was posted for hearing before the same Magistrate RR Khan, who was also adjudicating 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, Ranaut contended..Akhtar's counsel Jay K Bharadwaj submitted 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.He argued that the petition was not maintainable since it had not even been heard by Judge Khan yet and hence, was based on assumptions and conjectures.He further submitted 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”..Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate ST Dande dismissed the transfer petition today.Judge Dande observed in the 6-page order that none of the ingredients to seek transfer of case had been made out. "Only because transfer in earlier complaint was sought, and therefore present complaint is also mechanically sought to be transferred by the Applicant (Ranaut). The aspect of alleging bias against the concerned Judge in earlier complaint is already rejected by this court. Hence there is no case made out in the present application." the order reads. .Ranaut had earlier filed a plea before Chief Metropolitan Magistrate at Esplanade seeking the 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..[Read order]