The Supreme Court on Monday pulled up stand-up comedian Samay Raina for allegedly making derogatory remarks about persons with disabilities.
A bench directed Raina and four other comedians, Vipul Goyal, Balraj Paramjeet Singh Ghai, Nishant Jagdish Tanwar, and Sonali Thakkar (also known as Sonali Aditya Desai), to tender an unconditional apology on their YouTube channels and other social media platforms, according to the news agency ANI.
The order comes after a plea by Cure SMA Foundation of India, which accused the comedians of mocking people suffering from Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), a rare genetic disorder, and other disabilities during a show.
Earlier, on May 5, the court had warned the comedians to appear before it or face coercive action over the allegations.
“The petitioner is concerned by certain live and pre-recorded event videos of these individuals, due to their offensive, denigrating and dehumanising representation of persons with disabilities,” the petition said, reported news agency ANI.
“These videos shed light on the widespread irresponsible, insensitive and violate dissemination of such online content that contravenes the rights of the persons with disability under Article 14 and 21 of the Constitution of India, propels offensive stereotypes and misguided portrayals against them, and detrimentally impacts their societal participation, and fosters insensitivity and inhumanity against them, and as such falls within the reasonable restrictions under Article 19(2),” said the petition, as per the news agency ANI.
This is not the first time Raina has received a reprimand from the Supreme Court for his remarks. Earlier this year, Samay, along with Apoorva Mukhija, Ashish Chanchlani, and Ranveer Allahbadia, was named in an FIR for allegedly promoting obscene content on their show.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a plea seeking a gag order on “unverified public statements” regarding the case of Indian nurse Nimisha Priya, who faces the death penalty in Yemen for murder.
A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta told petitioner K A Paul that Attorney General R Venkataramani had already assured the court that only the government would make statements on the matter.
“What do you want? That nobody should say anything to media? The Attorney General has said the government will ensure no briefings. What else you want?” the bench remarked, before dismissing the plea as withdrawn.
Venkataramani called it a “very sensitive matter” and assured that no media briefings would take place until the issue was resolved.
The plea had sought directions to the Centre for urgent diplomatic efforts with Yemen to commute Priya’s death sentence to life imprisonment, arguing that ongoing negotiations were being undermined by false statements.
(With inputs from Agencies)
