Cuttack: An Odisha court has restrained two writers from publishing a biography of legendary Odia litterateur Fakir Mohan Senapati, after his granddaughter claimed that she was not being consulted for the memoir.
The order came upon a suit filed by Senapati’s granddaughter Minakshi Dutta, now the custodian of all his literary works.
Dutta had approached the court of senior civil judge in August to permanently restrain Debi Prasanna Patnaik and Lalatendu Mohapatra from publishing ‘Mo Jibani’.
Although she had signed an MoU with the two writers, Dutta is no more interested to continue with the project, alleging that they were taking unilateral decisions without even consulting her.
“The defendants (Patnaik and Mohapatra) are hereby directed to return all the manuscripts (both original and digitised versions) to Dutta within a month,” the court said in its order.
Senapati, regarded by many as the father of modern Odia literature, died in 1918 at the age of 75.
PTI