Mumbai: Bombay high court granted transit anticipatory bail to four persons including the writer, director, producer of Tandav in a criminal case registered in UP against them on Wednesday. Anticipatory bail only gives protection from arrest to a person in relation to the offence he apprehends arrest in.
Aniket Ujjwal Nikam, lawyer of the accused said, "Bombay High Court grants 3 weeks transit anticipatory bail to Tandav director Ali Abbas Zafar and 3 others in an FIR registered in UP to enable him to approach the appropriate court for regular pre-arrest bail."
Justice P D Naik granted the relief to the four for a period of three weeks to enable them to approach the concerned court at Lucknow where the FIR was registered against them.
Earlier in the day, a four-member team of Uttar Pradesh Police arrived in Mumbai to conduct a probe into the case registered in Lucknow against "Tandav", an official said.
The UP Police team is likely to record statements of the makers and cast and crew of the Amazon Prime Video's series, which has been accused of hurting religious sentiments for its depiction of Hindu deities.
Also Read: BJP files complaint against Tandav web series for hurting Hindu sentiments
Lawyers Aabad Ponda and Aniket Nikam, who represented Zafar and others, told the high court that the four require some time to approach the concerned court in Lucknow for a pre-arrest bail and hence require an interim relief from arrest.
"The (four) applicants are innocent and have been wrongly implicated in the offences," the transit anticipatory bail plea said.
Ponda and Nikam argued that a team of the Uttar Pradesh police had arrived in Mumbai to arrest the four and hence the protection from arrest was required.
The four have been booked under sections 153 A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race and so on), 295 (injuring or defiling place of worship with intent to insult the religion of any class), 501 (1)(B) (public mischief with intent to cause fear or alarm) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and under relevant sections of the Information Technology Act.
Earlier on Monday, an FIR was registered at Lucknow's Hazratganj Kotwali against Amazon Prime's India head of original content Aparna Purohit, Zafar, producer of the show Himanshu Krishna Mehra, writer Gaurav Solanki and others for allegedly hurting religious sentiments.
Also Read: Tandav controversy: Creator Ali Abbas Zafar issues 'unconditional' apology
Later, the cast and crew of the Saif Ali Khan starrer political-drama had extended their apologies to the viewers for "unintentionally" hurting their sentiments.
Zafar on Tuesday said that the cast and crew of the show has decided to implement changes in the Amazon Prime Video-based series in order to address the backlash against its content that has hurt religious sentiments of many viewers.
Zafar shared an official statement from the cast and crew of 'Tandav' on Twitter and reiterated that the team had no intentions to hurt or offend the sentiments of any caste, race, community or religion.
With inputs from agency
