Netflix India has received a complaint against Anurag Kashyap’s short film in the 2020 anthology, Ghost Stories.
After the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting formulated the Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 earlier this year, in what is perceived as one of the first examples of grievances to be registered, Netflix India has received a complaint against Anurag Kashyap’s short film in the 2020 anthology, Ghost Stories.
According to a Mid-Day report, the complainant has raised objection to a scene in the short film, in which Sobhita Dhulipala’s character eats a fetus after suffering a miscarriage. The complaint notes, “The scene is not required for the story, and if the creators wished to add such a scene, there should have been a trigger warning for women who have gone through the trauma of miscarriages.”
Complaints must be registered within 24 hours and addressed at the earliest, as per the report. The report quoted Netflix India spokesperson as saying, “As this was a partner-managed production [RSVP Movies and Flying Unicorn Entertainment], we reached out to the production company to share the complaint.”
Digital news media and OTT platforms were largely unregulated before the central government notified the new rules. The new rules have been seen by many as tool to moderate and impose restrictions on digital creators. “So it has started… A complaint came to Netflix on Ghost Stories. This is the end,” Anurag wrote in an Instagram Story that is no longer visible on his profile but was viewed by MediaNama.
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