Bollywood producers move HC to restrain Republic TV, Times Now from making 'irresponsible remarks'

Over 30 production houses from Bollywood industry associations on Monday approached the Delhi High Court against the "irresponsible, derogatory and defamatory reporting", after the death of Sushant Singh Rajput on June 14 by certain media houses in violation of the right to privacy of individual actors.

In a civil suit, the petitioners asked the High Court to grant perpetual and mandatory injunctions against Republic TV and Arnab Goswami, and Pradeep Bhandari and Times Now, and its editors Rahul Shivshankar and Navika Kumar as well as social media platforms.

Four Bollywood industry associations and thirty-four leading producers asked the court to direct them to refrain from "conducting media trials of Bollywood personalities and interfering with the right to privacy of persons associated with Bollywood".

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They also sought a direction to them to adhere to the provisions of the Programme Code under the Cable Television Networks Rules, 1994, and to withdraw, recall and take down all the defamatory content published by them against Bollywood.

They objected to highly derogatory words for Bollywood such as “dirt”, “filth”, “scum”, “druggies” and expressions such as “it is Bollywood where the dirt needs to be cleaned”, “all the perfumes of Arabia cannot take away the stench and the stink of this filth and scum of the underbelly of Bollywood”, “this is the dirtiest industry in the country”, and “cocaine and LSD drenched Bollywood”.

Maintaining that Bollywood is a distinct and well recognised class, comprising the Hindi film industry in Mumbai, they pointed out for several years, it is a huge source of revenue for the public exchequer, earns significant foreign exchange by way of revenue from overseas releases of films, tourism etc, and is a big source of employment.

"The livelihood of persons associated with Bollywood is being severely impacted by the smear campaign being run by the defendants. This is in addition to the ongoing pandemic which has resulted in extreme revenues and work opportunity loss," their plea said.

"The privacy of the members of Bollywood is being invaded, and their reputations are being irreparably damaged by painting the entire Bollywood as criminals, seeped in drug culture, and making being part of Bollywood as synonymous with criminal acts in the public imagination," their plea added.

Among the petitioners are the Producers Guild of India, the Cine and TV Artiste Association, the Film and TV Producers Council Screenwriters Association, Aamir Khan Productions Ad-Labs Films, Ajay Devgn Flims, and others.

Even after the case involving the unfortunate death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput, which appeared to have triggered the diatribe, was transferred to the CBI, those named indulged in what could be aptly described as a frenzy suggesting that the CBI should start making arrests, they claimed.