The Bombay High Court on Thursday dismissed the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI’s) plea seeking a stay on the airing of the docuseries ‘The Indrani Mukerjea Story: Buried Truth’, clearing the way for streaming platform Netflix to release it.

Soon after the court dismissed the petition and said the reasons would be recorded separately, the docuseries on Mukerjea, the prime accused in the Sheena Bora murder case, was made available on Netflix.

The bench remarked that it had viewed the series and prima facie could not find anything that goes against the prosecution The reasoned order will be made available in due course.

On February 22, Netflix had assured a division bench led by Justice Revati Mohite-Dere that it would not air the docuseries till February 29 and would arrange a screening for CBI representatives and judges. The docuseries was to be released on February 23 initially.

A division bench of Justices Mohite-Dere and Manjusha A Deshpande was hearing a plea by the CBI, which had approached the high court after a special court had last week rejected its plea seeking a stay on airing the docuseries.

The high court had asked whether the witnesses featured in the series were examined by the special court in the ongoing trial of the Sheena Bora murder case.

Senior advocate Ravi Kadam for Netflix submitted that out of the list of witnesses, five are part of the series, including Mukerjea’s son Mikhail Bora, a person who identified the spot where the body was burnt, and a police officer. He had also submitted that there were five books already published on the case.

On Thursday, Additional Solicitor General Devang Vyas and advocate Shreeram Shirsat claimed that the docuseries was a mini-trial and gave a perception of one side and the right of witnesses was required to be considered. He also added that witnesses are found commenting on the veracity of the material in the case and also on other witnesses who had been examined.

Kadam argued that the series was balanced and the threshold for pre-publication restraint was very high and that mere apprehension by the CBI was not enough.

Advocate Abhinav Chandrachud for series directors Shaana Levy and Uraaz Bahl opposed the plea and referred to the 2018 judgment of Justice Mohite-Dere in a plea by nine journalists in which she had ruled against the trial court’s media gag order in the Sohrabuddin Shaikh encounter.

Justice Mohite-Dere orally remarked on CBI’s submissions, “You (CBI) may not press the petition is what we thought to be honest. We tried to look at it from every angle as to how it would prejudice…We initially thought there might be something and we also watched it. There are public debates, proceedings are reported, there is no censorship on that. Public perception can be influenced by the media but the judiciary does not get affected by it and we only go by whatever evidence is produced before us. Public perception is the least of our concerns. There are so many movies. We are concerned about the matter.”

The judge went on to say, “People see the film and get over it, nobody carries the perception. You watch it like a documentary. Even whatever she (Indrani) has said (in the series) is in public domain. We have viewed and honestly, we have not found anything that goes against the prosecution. We felt that you (CBI) had a genuine apprehension and therefore we gave you the opportunity to view the series and we did not even let the other party (Netflix) argue on the last date.”

After hearing parties to the case, the bench dismissed the petition and said the reasoned order would be made available in due course.