Sujoy Ghosh has scored a decisive win in the Supreme Court, which has quashed criminal proceedings linked to Kahaani 2: Durga Rani Singh and dismissed the copyright allegations against him as baseless. The ruling ends a case that had followed the filmmaker for years, after claims that his 2016 thriller drew from a script titled Sabak.
The dispute began with a complaint by Umesh Prasad Mehta, who alleged that he had shared Sabak with Ghosh in 2015 and that Kahaani 2 copied it. A magistrate court in Hazaribagh issued summons in 2018, and the matter later survived challenge before the Jharkhand High Court. The Supreme Court has now overturned that course entirely, finding no real foundation for the prosecution.
Supreme Court Finds No Substance In The Complaint
A Bench of Justices PS Narasimha and Alok Aradhe held that the complaint did not disclose even a prima facie case. The court said the allegations were “bald and unsubstantiated” and pointed out that no specific similarities between the complainant’s script and the film had been identified.
The judges also found fault with the earlier orders, observing that both the summoning order and the High Court’s refusal to interfere reflected non application of mind. Witness statements relied upon by the complainant, the court said, did not establish that any part of Sabak had actually been copied into Kahaani 2.
The ruling also noted an important fact that had not been placed before the magistrate at the time summons were issued. The Screen Writers Association’s Dispute Settlement Committee had already examined the matter and found no similarity between the two works. The Supreme Court further recorded that Ghosh’s script for Kahaani 2 had been registered before the complainant’s script came into existence, undercutting the infringement claim at its core.
The Film At The Centre Of The Dispute
Kahaani 2: Durga Rani Singh arrived in 2016 as part of Ghosh’s signature run of twist driven thrillers, the space in which he built his strongest creative identity. Led by Vidya Balan, with Arjun Rampal and Jugal Hansraj in key roles, the film unfolded as a mystery around a woman living under an assumed identity while protecting a child and hiding a traumatic past.
Produced by Boundscript Motion Pictures and Pen Studios, the film had a modest theatrical run and collected about Rs 32.72 crore net in India, according to Box Office India. Even so, it remained closely associated with Ghosh’s brand of atmospheric, tightly wound suspense.
Why The Verdict Clears The Deck For Ghosh
The verdict does more than end one case. It removes a legal cloud from a filmmaker whose recent work has continued to lean into psychological tension and genre storytelling, from Badla to the Netflix titles Typewriter and Jaane Jaan. Those projects reinforced how firmly Ghosh remains linked to mysteries that hinge on mood, character, and misdirection.
With the Supreme Court shutting down a legal saga that stretched on for years, the conversation now moves back where Ghosh has always been most compelling, on the page and on the screen, building stories that pull viewers in and hold them there.
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