Netflix's 'Sacred Games' draws flak from Congress leader for criticizing former PM Rajiv Gandhi

CHENNAI: Within a week of the premiere of India's first original Netflix Series, "Sacred Games", West Bengal Congress leader Rajiv Sinha has filed a complaint against actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui and the producers of the series for insulting late Congress Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. 

Netflix has also been named in the complaint.

Rajiv Sinha, in his letter to the Kolkata Police, said that Nawazuddin as Ganesh Gaitonde "abused our late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi calling him fattu, which translated as pu*** in the subtitle". He also accused the makers of the show of "misrepresenting facts during his regime".

The series is making as much noise for its sex scenes, the use of profanity and savagery as it is for directors Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane's extraordinary efforts at transforming author Vikram Chandra's mammoth novel by the same name into a web series.

With episodes such as the 1975 Emergency, imposed by Indira Gandhi, and the government's forced sterilisation plan to the Bofors scandal and Rajiv Gandhi's gaffe in the 1985 Shah Bano case, when he was accused of choosing politics over women's rights, neatly stitched in the narrative, the script has been unsparing in its scorn.

In one of the dialogues mouthed by Gaitonde that prompted 37-year-old Rajiv Sinha to type his complaint. The fourth episode, titled "Brahmahatya", begins with Gaitonde accusing Mr Gandhi of playing politics in Shah Bano's triple talaq case.

He says, "... Shah Bano ko alag jalaya, desh ko alag. She took her husband to court and won. But the prime minister told her to shut up and overturned the court's judgment. Even Hindus criticised him. To please them, Ramayan, the TV show, aired every Sunday morning when the entire country glued to their televisions."

The show also stars Saif Ali Khan, Neeraj Kabi, Kubra Sait, Radhika Apte, Pankaj Tripathi and Vineet Kulkarni in important roles.