Shroff exonerated

On June 22, 2010 the Bombay High Court finally granted relief to Murzban Shroff by quashing the lower court’s criminal proceedings against the writer for using the word "ghati” while referring to Maharashtrians in his book Breathless in Bombay, reported Mumbai Mirror (MM) on the following day.

On July 8, 2010 Justice V. M. Kanade released a detailed 35-page judgment in which he observed: "At all times the word ghati has been uttered by the villain. At the end of the story, the hero reprimands him for doing so. He explains to the villain that there is secular unity in our country. In no way has the use of the word affected the integrity of our country... On the contrary it is seen that the writer has given the message of unity from the point of secularism.” This was reported in Daily News and Analysis (DNA) on July 10.

Murzban Shroff: "full faith in High Court”

The judgment stated the complainant [Vijay Murdas, who had filed a FIR (first information report) against Shroff in February 2009] had read only the portion of the work which he found objectionable, reveals DNA. "If the story is read as whole it is seen that there is no substance in the complaint.” Earlier, Kanade had remarked, "In India, we have a tradition of one community saying something against another. It cannot be construed as offensive, it is our culture. It certainly does not become a criminal offence.”

Tracing the course of events, MM mentions that after the FIR was filed, Shroff approached the High Court to quash it. His counsel Mihir Desai informed the court that the N. M. Joshi Marg Police Station had closed the case against the writer. Since the police had filed a summary report to the effect, the High Court sent the case back to the magistrate’s court. The latter directed further investigation and asked the Social Service Branch (SSB) to look into the matter. So Shroff once again approached the High Court which has finally quashed the proceedings and asked the SSB not to take any action against the author.

Shroff expressed gratitude to the judiciary for "understanding my work and its motivation.” He told MM, "I am equally pleased for other writers who would want to express themselves without fear... The role of literature is... strengthened when it has the sanctity of the law to protect it.”

"Yes, I had full faith in the High Court. I have never been more conscious of the democratic process at work as when I (was) waiting for my case to come up,” Shroff said in an interview with The Indian Express (IE) which was published on August 16, 2010. "Having written what I did, and having done so with a clear conscience, I knew I had every right to defend my work, and we are lucky that we have a judiciary that is erudite, liberal, progressive and sensitive to the role of the arts,” he told IE, while bemoaning that "the arts are becoming increasingly vulnerable, and it is a sad reflection of where we are headed as a society.”