Mr. Ravi Kadam, appearing on behalf of Sony, sought time to file a reply to the petition. In a statement he said that his clients will not telecast the two serials till the next date of hearing.

Zee in its petition had submitted that the copyright of the serials Chattan and Dastaan were assigned to Asia Today Limited (ATL) by Zee Telefilms Arabia LLC. The petition contended that Zee Telefilms Arabia had been contracted by ATL to make Dastaan and Chattan for a period of 208 and 104 respectively. ATL, in the petition claimed that it was the sole and absolute copyright owner of the serials.

Mr. Kunal Dasgupta, CEO, SET India, declined comment on the matter as it was ‘sub-judice’. “The matter has gone to the Court and I wouldn’t want to talk about it at this stage,” he said.

Earlier in the week, even as Sony started to telecast promos announcing the impending telecast of the serial, Zee TV officials were confident that Sony wouldn’t be able to telecast the two serials in their present form. Speaking on this and allied issues, Mr. R.D. Tyagi, advisor to the Zee Group (and ex-Police Commissioner of Mumbai) termed as ‘illegal’ the sale of the two serials, to Sony, by their producer, Mr. Vijay Malhotra.

“The producer has entered into a contract with Zee Telefilms Arabia (ZTA) for producing the serial. In turn Zee Telfilms Limited has contracted ATL to exhibit the serial only on Zee TV. So, SET Singapore’s claim to be the sole and exclusive copyright holder is null and void,” he said.

This is not the first time that the two sat-channels have locked horns over the copyright of serials. In the last instance, the two had gone to court over the copyright of Ghar Jamai, which finally went on air on Zee TV on Wednesday, July 1. The Bombay High Court, in this case, had upheld Zee’s claim of copyright and allowed it to go ahead with the telecast, after Sony had filed a petition claiming copyright.

Dastaan stars Parmeet Sethi, Ashish Vidyarthi, Suresh Oberoi and Navni Parihar, and Chattan stars Shammi Kapoor, Anang Desai, Anjana Mumtaz, Subiraj and others. Both serials are directed by Farooque Masudi. Dastaan airs Fridays at 21.30 IST and Chattan airs Mondays at 21.00 IST.