The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered Comedian and YouTuber Samay Raina and three other comedians to invite specially-abled persons with success stories to shows held on their platforms, and generate and raise funds for the timely and effective treatment of persons with disabilities.
Pronouncing the order, CJI Surya Kant said the comedian must take up this step before the top court hears the matter again. “We hope and expect that such few memorable events will take place before we hear the matter next. It’s a social burden we are putting on you (comedians) not penal burden,” the CJI said.
“You are all well-placed persons in the society. If you have become too popular, then share it with others,” CJI Kant further added.
The court was hearing a plea filed by Cure SMA Foundation seeking directions against comedians making insensitive remarks against people suffering with disabilities in Raina’s now-deleted show ‘India’s Got Latent’.
The ‘India’s Got Latent’ row
Comedian Samay Raina’s comedy show on YouTube came under heavy criticism after some objectionable remarks were made by some popular content creators, and during one such episode, remarks making fun of specially-abled people were also made.
These cases reached Supreme Court which asked the comedian and others to apologise and take necessary steps to compensate the damage.
Earlier in August, the apex court directed comedians Samay Raina, Vipul Goyal, Balraj Singh Ghai, Sonali Thakkar, and Nishant Tanwar to issue public apologies on social media over insensitive jokes targeting specially-abled people.
The plea was listed with the cases of Ranveer Allahabadia and Ashish Chanchalani. They sought clubbing of FIRs over India’s Got Latent controversy.
The case was heard by the bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi.
The court also said that humour is a part of life, but that doesn’t mean that one should start “laughing at others”. “And this is what so-called influencers of today should bear in mind. They are commercialising speech. The community at large should not be utilised to hurt the sentiments of certain sections. It’s not only freedom of speech, it’s commercial speech,” the outlet reported the court as saying.
Samay Raina deletes all episodes
Following heavy uproar on the show, India’s Got Latent show host Samay Raina had issued an apology over in Feb, saying that he has removed all episodes of “India’s Got Latent” from his YouTube channel. This was in the wake of the controversy over influencer Ranveer Allahbadia’s remark on the comedy show.
In his first response since the controversy erupted earlier this week, Raina said he will fully cooperate with all the investigating agencies in their probe.”Everything that is happening has been too much for me to handle. I have removed all ‘India’s Got Latent’ videos from my channel. My only objective was to make people laugh and have a good time. I will fully cooperate with all agencies to ensure their inquiries are concluded fairly. Thank you,” Raina, 27, posted on X.