Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan’s 11-year-old granddaughter has sued YouTube for circulating “fake news” about her “life and health”.
According to local reports, there are videos of Aaradhya Bachchan being circulated on YouTube containing fake information about her health.
The plaintiff, who is the daughter of actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan, filed her complaint at the Delhi High Court on Wednesday (19 April).
In response, the court restrained nine YouTube channels and completely restricted them from creating, publishing, uploading or sharing any content related to Aaradhya’s health.
The high court also directed Google to delist and deactivate videos that are the subject of the case.
“Every child is entitled to respect, be it a child of a celebrity or commoner,” Justice C Hari Shankar said, as per India Today. “Dissemination of misleading information to a child, especially as regards physical and mental health, is completely intolerable in law.
“Defendants are also restrained from creating publishing, uploading or disseminating of any videos which are identical or similar in content to the videos forming subject matter of the aforesaid URLs,” the judge said.
“It is clarified that this would encompass all videos that deal with the physical condition of the plaintiff.
“In other words, defendants are completely restrained from disseminating on any platform available across the internet relating to the mental or physical health of the plaintiff.”
In response, YouTube’s counsel said it will provide the actual information of the people running all the channels that are responsible for circulating videos of Aaradhya.
“They have provided the URLs, they will be delisted as well,” the counsel said, according to the Economic Times.
“Children must be treated with parity – whether celebrity child or otherwise – the court has said that the intermediaries should have a zero-tolerance policy on such fake news which is harmful to a child same as that for child pornography,” said Aaradhya’s lawyer Ameet Naik.
In 2021, Abhishek Bachchan hit out at trolls who targeted his daughter on social media.
“It’s completely unacceptable and something that I will not tolerate,” the actor told Bollywood Life.
“I’m a public figure that’s fine, my daughter is out of bounds. If you have anything to say, come and say it to my face.”
