The series IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack directed by Anubhav Sinha featuring Vijay Varma, Dia Mirza and Naseeruddin Shah has been caught up in a legal wrangle. News agency ANI has separately sued Netflix and the producers of the show over an issue of misuse of their archival material in four of the episodes. The plot of the series cracks the 1999 case of the Indian Airlines IC 814 flight kidnapping case.
As per the report of Bar and Bench, “On its turn, ANI agrees that ANI sues Netflix and makers of IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack for alleged infringement of copyright and trademark. The complainant states that its ‘licenced footages’ are cruelly exploited in a manner that depicts the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, General Pervez Musharraf and terrorist Masood Azhar.” Therefore the agency sought the above episodes to be made unavailable on the site.
Delhi High Court Issues Notice to Netflix
As a result of the civil complaint, the Delhi High Court has notified Netflix and the other individuals responsible for the series of the complaint. The court has received communication from the defendants and mounted a hearing for Friday.
As regards the charges, which shed light on the purpose of their activities, Kumar, who was appearing for ANI, said, “They have employed copyright archival footage of ANI without acquiring requisite license. They have also harnessed the ANI brand. Because the series has come under such negative scrutiny, our trademark and brand are being affected.”
Dealing with IC 814: The Kandahar About the Hijack Controversy
This is not the first time there has been some controversy about IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack. Previously, the series was criticized for showing the terrorists who hijacked the plane with ‘Hindu’ codenames. The terrorists in the series were called Bhola, Shankar while they were really Ibrahim Athar, Shahid Akhtar Aydn, Sunny, Ahmad Qazi, Zahoor Mistry and shakir. It was revealed after that because of the culprits, a couple of even terrorists were also called out by the names of – Bhola and Shankar during the plane hijacking.
As a counter reaction to that controversy, Netflix has also added a disclaimer to the series now mentioning the real names of the hijackers of the plane used in the series along with the fictional usage of the spine division.
