Netflix's controversial series 'Bad Boy Billionaires: India' has gone live on the OTT platform. The investigative docuseries, which claims to explore the rise and fall of India’s most infamous business tycoons, has been embroiled in legal soup after Subrata Roy, B Ramalinga Raju and Mehul Choksi moved court seeking a stay on the release of the documentary.
The series is described on Netflix as: "This investigative docuseries explores the greed, fraud and corruption that built up - and ultimately brought down - India's most infamous tycoons."
Three episodes of the series based on the founder of defunct Kingfisher Airlines Vijay Mallya, fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi and Sahara group chief Subrata Roy, are available to stream on the OTT platform.
Read Bad Boy Billionaires: India's review here.
The fourth episode of the series, based on former chairman and CEO of Satyam Computer Services B Ramalinga Raju, was not released as a Hyderabad civil court restrained Netflix from releasing the episode on a plea filed by Raju.
Sahara Group hit back at Netflix for dropping the three episodes, calling the documentary "ill-motivated". Condemning the documentary, and calling it defamatory and maliciously made in the garb of journalistic freedom, it said, "Netflix, being wholly owned subsidiary of foreign entities, in law, it has no protection of fundamental rights of free speech and expression. Sahara has already filed criminal cases against Netflix and their promoters, producers, directors and reporters etc."
"The law will take its own course against such mis-adventurous exercises of Netflix," said Sahara Group in a statement.
A civil court in Patna had earlier restrained Netflix from releasing the documentary series using Roy's name in an order dated August 28. The California-based platform subsequently moved the Supreme Court to seek a stay on the order. However, the top court on September 2 refused to entertain the appeal by Netflix.
Days after the SC refused to entertain the appeal, the Patna High Court, too, dismissed the OTT platform’s plea challenging the injunction order.
The release was possible after a lower court in Bihar on October 3 vacated its own stay order, as per an Economic Times report.
Choksi had also filed a petition against the release of the documentary in the Delhi High Court and a separate plea demanding a pre-screening of the documentary, which was dismissed.
The PNB-scam-accused challenged the order of a single-judge bench dismissing his plea seeking pre-screening of the documentary. The division bench deferred the matter to October 13.
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