Kangana Ranaut and brother Aksht receive notice for ‘historical inaccuracies’ in Emergency, exploiting author and book

Kangana Ranaut has landed in a new controversy for her last release, Emergency. Veteran journalist and author Coomi Kapoor has filed a lawsuit against Kangana Ranaut’s Manikarnika Films Pvt Ltd and streaming platform Netflix, accusing them of breaching their contract and damaging her reputation by claiming that Kangana's film is based on her book, The Emergency: A Personal History.

Kangana Ranaut and Netflix receive legal notice for Emergency

The author claimed that Emergency is filled with “historical inaccuracies" for which her book is being held responsible. She also expressed that the film's distorted portrayal has led to breach of trust.

Kapoor sent notices to Kangana and her brother Aksht Ranaut, the producer of Emegency, in the matter earlier this month.

“I phoned Kangana Ranaut’s brother, Aksht Ranaut, who is the producer. But have received no response till this morning. This could have easily been avoided if the script writer had even done a cursory reading of the book in which the accurate data is given,” said Kapoor to ThePrint on Tuesday.

Allegations against Kangana Ranaut, Aksht Ranaut

The author said that Aksht Ranaut met her in Mumbai in 2021 to buy the rights of her book to utilise a single chapter focused on Indira Gandhi.

She signed a “tripartite contract” with Manikarnika Films and Penguin, which included two key clauses in the contract. She maintains the clauses were breached.

According to Kapoor, the contract clearly mentioned that her name and book couldn’t be used for promotion or publicity without her written permission.

While the producers are entitled to artistic freedom, Kapoor said that “no details should be altered if they don’t align with well-documented historical facts already available in the public domain.”

“I had specifically told them to not use the term ‘based on’ but they still did,” Kapoor said. She further claimed that she was never shown the film script. 

She reportedly noticed that Emergency credited her book as its source only after its release on Netflix.

“When the film was released I checked the media articles and they all said ‘inspired’ so I was fine. But, when I recently watched it on Netflix, it read “based on” towards the end. In order to give credibility to their work, they used my name,” Kapoor said.

Currently, Emergency, streaming on Netflix, comes with a disclaimer which reads: “The film is inspired by the book ‘The Emergency’ by Coomi Kapoor and ‘Priyadarshani’ by Jaiyanth Vasant Shinde.”

However, the last line of the disclaimer also says in bold: "“The film "Emergency" is based on the books “The Emergency” by Coomi Kapoor and “Priyadarshani” by Jaiyanth Vasant Shinde.”

Coomi Kapoor’s The Emergency was published by Penguin in 2015 and offered a detailed account of the 1975-77 Emergency period.

Alleged inaccuracies in Emergency

Kapoor claimed several inaccuracies in Emergency, including wrongly showing Akbar Ahmed as the one who banned Kishore Kumar’s songs - a decision she attributed in her book to then I&B Minister V.C. Shukla. 

She said that Ahmed himself confronted her about it after watching Emergency. “I had to explain that my book never made such a claim,” she said. She also added, “He wasn’t the only one. Many people have called me saying, ‘what have you written in the book?’."

Other errors include depiction journalist Nikhil Chakravarty’s imprisonment and misrepresenting the Emergency’s timeline. 

Netflix and Manikarnika Films are yet to respond to legal notices, updated the author.