Indian actor faces police complaint after viral nude photoshoot
New Delhi, Jul 26 (EFE).- A police station in India’s western city of Mumbai, home to the Hindi film industry or Bollywood, on Tuesday registered a complaint of spreading “obscenity” against actor Ranveer Singh for a nude photoshoot he appeared in for a magazine, triggering a controversy.
The complaint, released by the police, alleges that the suggestive photos “without clothes” – despite them not being explicit – released on Instagram and other social networks by the film star “to earn a large amount of money,” are an “attempt to corrupt the youth.”
“His actions have caused shame in the minds of women,” the complainant said, according the police, which has registered a complaint under various sections of the Indian penal code such as obscenity and outraging women’s modesty.
On Friday, Singh had posted a series of photos on his social media handles, shot for United States-based Paper Magazine, in which he posed both like a bodybuilder in his underwear as well as nude, sitting on a carpet.
The images have since then gathered more than 14 million likes on Twitter and over two million on Instagram, grabbing headlines in a conservative country such as India, where celebrities posing nude is a rare phenomenon.
The South Asian nation also has legal provisions against nudity, with article 292 of the penal code prohibiting “obscene” content, apart from other things.
The same article, which has been invoked against Singh and can be traced back to British laws before India’s independence in 1947, also bans or restricts the sale and distribution of sextoys and pornography in the country of over 1.3 billion people.
However, sometimes the zeal to prevent obscenity goes even further.
In 2018, the cover of women’s magazine Grihalakshmi showing a breastfeeding woman with the breast uncovered ended up being dragged to the court, while another photo of actor Shilpa Shetty kissing Hollywood actor Richard Gere led to a complaint being filed against her in 2007.
Famous Indian painter MF Hussain had to even flee the country in 2006 due to allegations of obscenity over his nude paintings of Hindu goddesses. EFE
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