Mumbai : A sessions court on Wednesday rejected actor Kangana Ranaut’s plea for transfer of veteran lyricist Javed Akhtar’s defamation complaint against her from the magistrate currently hearing the case. The court also rejected Ranaut’s plea to transfer her counter complaint against Akhtar to another magistrate.

Earlier, the Esplanade court had rejected similar pleas made by Ranaut. Citing bias, Ranaut had earlier said she had lost faith in the Andheri metropolitan magistrate court that is hearing the defamation case. However, in October, the additional chief metropolitan magistrate at Esplanade court dismissed her plea for the transfer.

The court also rejected Ranaut’s plea to transfer her counter complaint against Akhtar to another magistrate. In September last year Ranaut had accused Akhtar of extortion and criminal intimida- tion among other charges. She claimed that in a public dispute with her co-star, Hrithik Roshan, Akhtar called her sister and her to his house at Juhu and threatened her and forced her to tender a written apology.

Akhtar’s defamation complaint was submitted in November 2020 before the Andheri magistrate’s court.

Akhtar’s plea had said he was shocked when he learnt on July 19, 2020, that Ranaut had given an interview to a news channel, damaging his “immaculate reputation by falsely attributing statements to him”.

The plea further said during the interview, which lasted approximately 57 minutes, Ranaut proceeded to give her opinions on the circumstances around actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death without appearing to have any direct personal knowledge of these. The plea also said in the same interview she referred to Akhtar as being part of an alleged “suicide gang”.