Juhi Chawla, the Hindi actor whose case against the rollout of 5G technology in India was dismissed by the Delhi High Court in June, posted a video on Instagram on Monday and clarified her stance on the issue.
The actor also shared a statement with the press, in which she said, “All this while I remained silent because I believe silence has its own deafening sound, but now I’d like to bring forth some very important and shocking details of happenings, in my 11-year journey of discovering EMF radiation, its health effects, and the glaring ignorance of certain authorities in this regard.”
This comes as a response to Justice JR Midha saying that her suit was filed to garner publicity, when he dismissed the case.
In the 14-minute long video, captioned “I’ll let you decide if it was a publicity stunt,” Chawla said that she is not against technology and only wanted to ensure that 5G technology is certified as safe to use. She stated that in 2019, she filed an RTI request to get information on the impact of mobile tower radiation on human and animal health. The Science and Engineering Research Board responded by saying that no such reports were available in the public domain, and no research on 5G had been conducted, she added.
Chawla mentioned that the sight of a few mobile towers in front of her house in 2010 had first alerted her to the issue and she had wanted to know about the radiation effects of the towers on her home. “We managed to get an agency from Hyderabad to check the radiation at the house. The operator showed me the meter and it was at the highest level. We were told that radiation of such a high level could have ill effects on our health,” she said in Hindi.
On May 31 this year, Chawla moved the Delhi High Court against the proposal to set up 5G network in India. She had filed a 5,000-page lawsuit with 33 parties as defendants, including the Science and Engineering Research Board; Ministry of Communications; Ministry of Electronics and Information; Ministry of Science and Technology; Ministry of Health and Family Welfare; Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change; Indian Council of Medical Research; some universities; and the World Health Organization.
The court, while dismissing the plea in June, had also stated that the actor, along with the other plaintiffs, had abused the process of law and imposed a fine of Rs 20 lakh on them.
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In her press statement, Chawla said, “Whatever transpired in June, left me feeling hurt and confused. On one hand, I received some bad press and publicity, on the other, I received heartwarming messages from unknown people telling me they were genuinely and completely in support. One such message was from a group of farmers in Maharashtra which brought tears to my eyes. They wished to carry out a voluntary drive to collect a small sum of money from each of their 10,000 farmers to help me pay the hefty penalty.”
On July 29, Chawla withdrew her plea in connection with the dismissal of her lawsuit against the 5G rollout. The plea sought that her petition against 5G rollout be declared ‘rejected’ instead of ‘dismissed’. Justice Jayant Nath allowed the withdrawal of the plea.