After the Sushant Singh Rajput case, many news channels including Republic TV and Times Now made allegations on various Bollywood personalities about drug trafficking. They showed various defamatory content against them and posted them on social media.
As a result of this, 38 Bollywood production houses filed a suit against these news channels praying to restraint them from publishing any such content which is defamatory in nature and to order them to abide by the Programme Code under the Cable Television Networks Rules. They claimed that such remarks interfered with their Right to privacy of persons connected with the film industry.
The Delhi High Court comprising of Justice Rajiv Shakdher while hearing the case on November 9, 2020, ordered the news channels including Republic TV, its editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami and reporter Pradeep Bhandari, Times Now editor-in-chief Rahul Shivshankar and group editor Navika Kumar that no defamatory content should be posted on social media against Bollywood personalities. The Court issued the notice and left the matter to be further heard on December 14, 2020.
