Music label sues Rahul Gandhi for illegal use of 'KGF: Chapter 2' music in Bharat Jodo Yatra

On Friday, MRT Music record label, who owns the rights to 'KGF: Chapter 2' music, filed a case against several leaders of the Indian National Congress (INC) party including Rahul Gandhi over copyright violations. The Bangalore-based record label claimed that the Congress party used their copyrighted music for Bharat Jodo Yatra advertisements without seeking their permission.

The record label recently approached Bengaluru police and filed a complaint against INC party leaders for copyright infringement. According to the label, two videos were posted on Congress' social media handles during the Bharat Jodo Yatra that had songs from the Kannada hit movie, which is a violation of the Copyright Act.

The FIR was registered against Rahul Gandhi, Jairam Ramesh, and Supriya in the Yashwanthpur police station under the provisions of the Copyright Act, the Information Technology Act and the Indian Penal Code.

"The aforementioned unlawful actions of the accused amount to an offence under section 63 of the Copyrights Act. It is also a serious offence amounting to making a false electronic record with the intention to project the same as genuine and thereby cheating the public at large," the complaint said.

"Each of the copyrighted content of the complainant has been illegally stored, hosted, downloaded, sideloaded, uploaded and thereby creating infringing copies of the sound recording and audiovisual content as per the Copyright Act, 1957 and the same is liable to be handed over and/or destroyed," it added.

Taking a dig at Congress and reacting to the FIR, BJP leader Amit Malviya tweeted, "After illegally using picture of Kannada actor Akhil Iyer in their campaign, Congress sued again. This time by MRT Music, which owns the popular music label of KGF2. Congress picked up songs from the movie for Bharat Jodo Yatra without seeking the firm`s permission."