Mohan Babu, Brahmi move SC

Hyderabad: Tollywood actors Mohan Babu and Brahmanandam have knocked the doors of the Supreme Court on the High Court’s ruling which directed them to ‘return the Padma Shri awards voluntarily as they had misused them’. In a Special Leave Petition (SLP) filed in the apex court on Thursday, the two veteran actors have challenged the High Court verdict stating that they have never intentionally or otherwise misused the awards conferred on them by the Government of India and the prefixing in the titles of the movie Denikaina Ready was just a technical error committed in the post-production work. The awards were never used for commercial gain, they reportedly submitted before the Court. A PIL filed by BJP senior leader N Indrasena Reddy last year has dealt a blow to both the actors who are unable to wriggle out of the situation since then.

Pleading innocence on the issue, comedian Brahmanandam has informed the Court that he had requested the producers of the movie to delete prefixes from the titles the moment he came to know about the error. The controversial movie Denikaina Ready was produced by Mohan Babu himself with his son Vishnu in the main cast. The movie invited the wrath of the Brahmin community for showing them in poor light and several Brahmin Associations had protested against it and even submitted a memorandum to President Pranab Mukherjee to ban the film.