Now, Sushmita’s turn to receive notice for ‘lewd comments’

If public interest litigants have their way, then Madurai would be bustling with Bollywood stars. After Khusboo, Shilpa Shetty and Reema Sen...

If public interest litigants have their way, then Madurai would be bustling with Bollywood stars. After Khusboo, Shilpa Shetty and Reema Sen, the latest to come under the ‘moral spotlight’ here is former Miss Universe and actor Sushmita Sen.

The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has issued a notice to the actor, returnable on January 7, 2008, on the basis of a complaint filed by an advocate against her for “obscenity” and for “making lewd sexual comments” in interviews to television channels and publications.

In his petition, Girish Kumar has accused that the actor, in an interview to a television channel on October 7, 2007, said that “no Indian is chaste or virgin anymore and having pre-marital or post marital affair is nothing wrong in society nowadays.” The interview was also published in a Tamil daily, he said.

The criminal revision petition sought action against her for offences under Sections 292, 292 B, 293 and 294 of IPC for “obscenity and lewd sexual comments,” besides Sections 499 and 500 of IPC (Defamation), Sections 3 and 4 of the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act and Sections 2, 3 and 6 of Young Persons Harmful Publication Act. Admitting the petition, Justice A Selvam ordered notice to the actor.

The petition has been clubbed along with another filed earlier in January this year before a lower court in Madurai, said lawyer Peter Ramesh, representing Kumar. The earlier petition was based on an interview in October, 2006, in which she allegedly said that “enquiring from a man whether or not he was married before falling in love with him was beyond comprehension”. Her statement was a “direct insult to womanhood,” the petitioner said.

In June last year, a local court in Madurai issued arrest warrants against actors Shilpa Shetty and Reema Sen for posing “in an obscene manner” for photographs, which a Tamil eveninger, Tamil Murasu owned by the Maran family, published between December 2005 and January 2006. Khusboo too was issued a warrant for “casting aspersions on the judiciary” in her media comments supporting Shetty and Sen.