The High Court of Karnataka on Wednesday declined to quash the FIR registered against Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi, Jairam Ramesh and Supriya Shrinate for using a song from Kannada movie KGF Chapter-2 for their online campaign for Bharat Jodo Yatra by violating the copyright.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed the order while dismissing the joint petition filed by the Congress leaders questioning the legality of registration of criminal case by MRT Music, which owns copyright for the songs of the movie, in additional to civil suit filed by it seeking damages.
“The petitioners appears to have tampered with the source code without the permission and played the audio which would undoubtedly amount to infringement of copyright of the complainant. The petitioners appeared to have taken the copyright of the complainant for granted…and therefore prima facie all these factors become a matter of evidence which have to thrashed out in the investigation,” the Court observed.
