Actor Sonam Kapoor and filmmakers Anurag Kashyap and Mira Nair are among over two thousand people who have signed an open letter condemning the media’s “witch-hunt” of Rhea Chakraborty in the coverage of Sushant Singh Rajput’s death investigation.
Film personalities including Frieda Pinto, Zoya Akhtar, Farhan Akhtar, Alankrita Shrivastava, Gauri Shinde, Reema Kagti, Ruchi Narain, Rasika Dugal, Nitya Mehra, Amruta Subhash, Mini Mathur, Dia Mirza, Kubbra Sait and others have also signed the letter that asks the media to “hunt news, not women”.
Chakraborty has been arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in connection with drugs-related allegations in the death case of Rajput.
The 34-year-old actor was found dead at his Bandra residence on June 14.
A Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the NCB is probing the drug case in which 18 people including Chakraborty, her brother Showik Chakraborty, Rajput’s manager Samuel Miranda, domestic help Dipesh Sawant and others have been arrested.
The open letter, addressed to “the dear news media of India” is published on a blog called Feminist Voices and it has over 2,500 signatories from all walks of life.
“Dear news media of India. We are worried about you. Are you feeling ok? Because, as we watch your witch-hunt of Rhea Chakraborty, we cannot understand why you have abandoned every professional ethic of journalism, every tenet of human decency and dignity and chosen instead to physically assault a young woman with your camera crews, endlessly violate her privacy and work overtime on false accusations and moralistic innuendo for a drama of ‘Rhea ko phasao’,” the letter reads.
The letter calls out the media for being “obsessed” with creating the narrative of a young woman as a “morally dubious character” because she speaks up for herself instead of “acting like a damsel in distress”. (PTI)
