Film director Sujoy Ghosh has received major relief from the Supreme Court, which has quashed a criminal case filed in connection with his 2016 film Kahaani 2: Durga Rani Singh. The case was pending in Hazaribagh, Jharkhand. It had been filed by a writer who claimed that the film was based on his script.

The dispute began when Umesh Prasad Mehta from Hazaribagh accused Ghosh of stealing his unpublished script titled Sabak. Mehta alleged that Kahaani 2 was based on his work and filed a criminal case under Section 63 of the Copyright Act.

According to Mehta, he had shared his script with Ghosh in 2015 in hopes of obtaining a recommendation letter for copyright registration. However, he alleged that Ghosh went on to make the film without informing him.

Acting on Mehta’s complaint, the Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) court issued a summons to Ghosh on June 7, 2018. Challenging this, Ghosh approached the Jharkhand High Court. On April 22, 2025, the High Court declined to intervene at the summons stage and directed him to present his case before the CJM court.

After failing to get relief from the High Court, Ghosh moved Supreme Court. He argued that he had written the film’s script in 2012 and had it registered with the Screenwriters Association in December 2013. Therefore, he contended, the complainant’s claim of sharing the script in 2015 was baseless.

Ghosh also argued that a civil dispute had been wrongly turned into a criminal case and questioned why the case was filed in Hazaribagh instead of Mumbai, suggesting it was done to harass him.

After hearing both sides, a bench of Justice PS Narasimha and Justice R. Mahadevan had reserved its verdict on March 10. The Supreme Court has now quashed the case, granting relief to Ghosh.