GNLU Gandhinagar alumni have written an open letter to Netflix about a new TV show it is shooting about “unruly students” at a fictional Gujarat National Law Academy, provisionally entitled Law of the Jungle.

27 GNLU students and alumni yesterday wrote a joint letter to Netflix, a copy of which we have seen, noting their concerns:

Dear Madam / Sir,

We would like to heartily congratulate you on the initiative in Law of the Jungle to popularise legal education with the masses.

However, we must register our official objection that the name of the college - Gujarat National Law Academy (GNLA) - is too similar to Gujarat National Law University (GNLU) Gandhinagar.

In your press release of 12th February 2020 announcing Law of the Jungle, you suggest that the series may portray alcohol and drug use, as well as violence and sexual interaction on campus.

As former students of GNLU Gandhinagar, we wish to inform you that this would paint an entirely inaccurate picture of this esteemed national law university, and would mislead CLAT applicants about the true nature of legal education.

We would kindly request you to consider changing the name of the college to avoid any confusion and legal measures you may constrain us to take.

Best laid plans

That said, it’s not known whether the series will ever see the light of day.

The streaming series, with a working title of Law of the Jungle, was set to begin shooting in July 2020, according to Netflix's press release but, as many other shows, it is likely to be postponed due to the COVID-19 response.

We have reached out to Netflix for comment and for its plans for the show, as well as to the GNLU administration.

The series is about a shy, introverted, tee-totaller law student called Sandeep Patel, who interns at a criminal law chamber and befriends a bootlegger selling alcohol in Gujarat, which is in/famously a dry state, of course.

Sandeep in turn becomes a bootlegger by night, supplying alcohol to students and, apparently later, “anything that students may desire”, according to Netflix’s announcement.

According to Netflix:

Sandeep will face a violent group of senior students who have control of the drugs trade on campus, the law school administration and his own morals and demons, while temptation beckons in the form of the seductive principal’s wife and daughter.

Hijinks, predictably, ensue.

Read Netflix’s full press release here.

This is not the first fictionalised account of life as a lawyer that has irked the profession.

Most famously both Jolly LLB and its sequel had faced legal notices over its alleged disparagement of Bata shoes, as well as for making the profession look bad, and for ridiculing the surname Jolly and featuring (the real) Meerut University as the protagonist’s alma mater.

Thanks to the kind anonymous reader who shared this tip with us.

16:42: Yes, since it's 1st April today, this story was unfortunately too good to be true. Though it should be said that we'd happily watch the hell out of a show such as the above, if Netflix is listening. Also, many thanks to our regular April Fools' reader for the idea and most of this story. Whoever you are, you're a star.