NEW DELHI: IRS officer and former Narcotics Control Bureau zonal director Sameer Wankhede has approached the Delhi High Court with a defamation suit against actor Shah Rukh Khan, Gauri Khan’s production company Red Chillies Entertainment and Netflix, claiming that their series The Ba*ds of Bollywood has tarnished his reputation.
The petition, filed on Thursday, seeks a permanent and mandatory injunction, along with a declaration and damages against Red Chillies Entertainment Private Limited, Netflix and others. It describes the show as a “false, malicious and defamatory video” produced by Red Chillies and streamed by Netflix and asks the court to restrain further broadcast.
Wankhede has demanded Rs 2 crore as damages, with a stipulation that the money be donated to the Tata Memorial Cancer Hospital for the benefit of cancer patients. His legal team argued that the series paints anti-narcotics enforcement in a distorted and damaging light.
“This series disseminates a misleading and negative portrayal of anti-drug enforcement agencies, thereby eroding public confidence in law enforcement institutions,” Advocate Aditya Giri, representing Wankhede, submitted before the court.
The plea claims the programme has been deliberately created to malign the officer’s reputation, particularly given that the case involving him and Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan remains sub-judice before both the Bombay High Court and the NDPS Special Court in Mumbai.
Wankhede’s suit also highlights a sequence in which a character delivers the slogan “Satyamev Jayate” — parts of the National Emblem — and immediately makes an obscene gesture by showing the middle finger.
The officer argues that such depiction constitutes a “grave and sensitive violation” of the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971, an offence carrying penal consequences. The matter is scheduled to be taken up for further proceedings in the Delhi High Court.