The Supreme Court on Monday reprimanded five social media influencers, including stand-up comic Samay Raina, describing their remarks on their shows as “insensitive jokes” and directed them to apologise to people living with disabilities and rare genetic disorders.
The petition against them was filed by the CURE SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy) Foundation of India, citing insensitive jokes made by Samay Raina, Vipul Goyal, Balraj Paramjit Singh Ghai, Sonali Thakkar, and Nishant Jagdish Tanwar.
The petitioner organisation submitted a number of jokes made by them as examples, some at Raina's most popular show ‘India’s Got Latent', and some from other performances.
During one such show, Samay Raina had referred to a charity drive for a two-month-old baby, who needed an injection priced at ₹16 crore for a rare disease.
The reference apparently was to an injection used against the life-threatning condition called Spinal Muscular Atrophy.
In the show, turning to a woman randomly in the audience, Samay Raina jokingly wondered if the parents would reconsider using it for the child when they get the money.
“Ma’am, imagine you were that mother and suddenly ₹16 crore appeared in your bank account. With a two-month-old baby, wouldn’t you at least glance at your husband and think: ‘Hmmm, inflation is rising!’?” he said, in Hindi. He said the decision would be tough since “there is no guarantee that the child would survive anyway”.
{{/usCountry}}“Ma’am, imagine you were that mother and suddenly ₹16 crore appeared in your bank account. With a two-month-old baby, wouldn’t you at least glance at your husband and think: ‘Hmmm, inflation is rising!’?” he said, in Hindi. He said the decision would be tough since “there is no guarantee that the child would survive anyway”.
{{/usCountry}}The clip went viral with people calling it “dark” or “dank” humour.
SC slams four other influencers
A bench comprising Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi instructed the Centre to formulate guidelines to curb speeches that offend or mock disabled persons, women, children, and senior citizens. It observed that freedom of speech and expression does not extend to commercial content that hurts the sentiments of other communities.
The court criticised Samay Raina for his affidavit, stating that he initially tried to justify his conduct and portray himself as innocent.
The court also said it would consider imposing penalties on social media influencers, including Raina, for comments offending disabled persons at a later stage.
All were present in court except Sonali Thakkar (also known as Sonali Aditya Desai), who was exempted from physically appearing provided she aired an unconditional apology on her programme.
The bench told attorney general R Venkataramani that any social media guidelines should not be drafted in haste in response to a single incident, but should be based on broad parameters and include input from all stakeholders.
On July 15, the top court had directed the five influencers, including Raina, to appear before it in a case seeking action against them for ridiculing persons with disabilities.