Netflix India received a complaint on Tuesday about the Anurag Kashyap-directed segment in the 2020 anthology Ghost Stories, reported Mid-Day.
The complainant has raised objection to a scene where the protagonist of the short film, played by Sobhita Dhulipala, is seen eating the foetus after suffering a miscarriage, as per the report.
“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,” the complaint noted.
According to the Mid-Day’s report, this is among the first grievances to be registered after the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology introduced the new Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code Rules, 2021 to regulate content in OTT platforms, social media intermediaries and digital news media. The new IT Rules 2021 came into effect on May 26.
As per the Rules, social media intermediaries and streaming platforms have to establish a three-level ‘grievance redressal mechanism’ for receiving and resolving complaints from users. The self-regulation by publishers includes the appointment of a Grievance Redressal Officer who shall act on every grievance within 15 days.
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These guidelines were to be adopted by platforms like Netflix, Disney+ Hotstar, Amazon Prime Video, and 14 others and is part of an attempt to bring the streaming platforms under the purview of the central government.
The complaint against Kashyap’s short film is currently pending with the streaming giant’s Grievance Redressal Officer.
“As this was a partner-managed production [RSVP Movies and Flying Unicorn Entertainment], we reached out to the production company to share the complaint,” the spokesperson of Netflix said to Mid-Day.
Ghost Stories, a Hindi horror anthology, released on Netflix on New Year’s Day 2020. It comprises of four short films directed by Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar, Karan Johar and Dibakar Banerjee.