MUMBAI POLICE ASK FOR VIDEO MOCKING CELEBRITIES TO BE DELETED

[Mr. Bhat is a member of All India Bakchod, a comedy troupe whose videos are often widely circulated on social media in India, and which has courted controversy before. Complaints were filed last year against 14 people over use of obscene and vulgar language at an event in Mumbai organized by the group that was attended by several prominent Bollywood actors.]

By Nida Najar and Suhasini Raj

Lata Mangeshkar, who has sung the vocals for Bollywood heroines for decades, 
at an award ceremony in Hyderabad, India, in 2010. The Indian police 
have asked for a comedian’s video, which mocks the singer, 
to be removed from the web. Credit Noah Seelam/
Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

NEW DELHI — The Mumbai police have asked Facebook and YouTube to remove a video mocking two beloved Indian figures, a cricket star and an 86-year-old Bollywood singer, after receiving complaints from politicians.

Ashish Shelar, the leader of India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party for Mumbai, and a rightist regional party filed complaints with the police on Monday objecting to language in the video, which was posted last week by a comedian, Tanmay Bhat.

“They’re the icons of all India, and you cannot insult them with such bad language,” Sandeep Deshpande, a spokesman for the rightist party, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, said on Monday in an interview with the television station India Today. He said the video was “hurting sentiments all over India” and could undermine law and order.

Mr. Shelar said the video was defamatory.

Sangramsinh Nishandar, a spokesman for the Mumbai police, said on Tuesday that officers had taken no legal action over the video but were “looking into the nitty-gritty” of how it could be removed. He said the police had asked Facebook and YouTube to take it down.

Sachin Tendulkar, a hugely famous cricketer 

who retired in 2013, in Mumbai last year.

Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Gaurav Bhaskar, a spokesman in India for Google, which owns YouTube, would not confirm whether the company had been contacted by the police but said that it complies with valid requests from law enforcement authorities. Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the expletive-laced video, which was created on Snapchat, Mr. Bhat uses that app’s face-swap feature to impersonate Sachin Tendulkar, a hugely popular cricketer who retired in 2013, and Lata Mangeshkar, a so-called playback singer for Bollywood films whose career dates to the 1940s. Playback singers record vocals for song-and-dance numbers, to which actors and actresses lip sync.

Mr. Bhat depicts the two celebrities arguing, with the cricketer telling the singer that she is “5,000 years old” and suggesting she should die. “Have you seen your face? It looks like someone has kept you in water for, like, eight days,” he has Mr. Tendulkar say.

The singer, her middle finger slowly rising, responds in a singsong tone, “Vinod is better than you,” an apparent reference to the retired cricketer Vinod Kambli.

In a post sharing the video on Facebook, Mr. Bhat wrote, “Also I obviously love Lata and Sachin, just having some fun.”

But Mr. Shelar of the Bharatiya Janata Party said by telephone on Tuesday that the video was “a public insult — it is defamation against Lata Mangeshkar and Sachin Tendulkar, who are public icons."

Mr. Bhat is a member of All India Bakchod, a comedy troupe whose videos are oftenwidely circulated on social media in India, and which has courted controversy before. Complaints were filed last year against 14 people over use of obscene and vulgar language at an event in Mumbai organized by the group that was attended by several prominent Bollywood actors.

Many people in India reacted on social media to Mr. Bhat’s video, saying it was offensive, and some adding that he should be arrested. But others came to his defense, including Sanjay Jha, a spokesman for the Congress party who used the opportunity to take a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

“We endure Modi’s one-sided bad jokes repeatedly with great grace in India,”, Mr. Jha wrote. “Let’s apply the same yardstick” he added, referring to Mr. Bhat’s case.

Rajdeep Sardesai, a political journalist, wrote on Twitter that the calls for Mr. Bhat’s arrest were “crazy,” adding, “Except incitement to violence and slander/defamation, free speech must prevail.”

@ The New York Times