Bollywood Unites; Salman Khan, Aamir Khan & Top Producers Sue Republic TV, Times Now & Their Anchors For Calling Them ‘Druggies’, ‘Scum’

A host of Bollywood filmmakers have filed a lawsuit in the Delhi High Court against "irresponsible reporting by certain media houses", in the latest fallout of the Sushant Singh Rajput investigation. Some of the film industry's biggest names, including Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar, Ajay Devgn, Karan Johar, Aditya Chopra and Farhan Akhtar, have come together in the unprecedented legal action against two channels - Republic TV & Times Now. The suit has been filed against Republic TV, and Arnab Goswami and Pradeep Bhandari of the channel. The suit has also been filed against Times Now and its top faces Rahul Shivshankar and Navika Kumar. The channels used "highly derogatory words and expressions for Bollywood", said the producers, listing terms like "dirt", "filth", "scum" and "druggies" used over the past few months. The film industry has been in the spotlight over a drugs probe linked to the investigations into the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput on June 14. The channels as well as social media platforms must "refrain from making or publishing irresponsible, derogatory and defamatory remarks against Bollywood and its members", the producers say. Times Now Editor-in-Chief Rahul Shivshankar, in response, said cases against his channel's journalists were "bad precedent".