Mumbai police to visit house of actor Ranveer Singh again to issue summons over nude photoshoot

An officer said the team will go on Tuesday to issue him a summons to appear before them on August 22 to record his statement. “We will be recording his statement in connection with the FIR registered by the Chembur police station as part of our probe in the case,” said a senior police officer.

The Mumbai police had on July 26 registered an FIR against Ranveer Singh for allegedly posting photographs from his nude photoshoot for New York-based Paper magazine on his Instagram account. The action came after the president of a city-based NGO lodged a complaint with the police.

In his statement, complainant Lalit Tekchandani said on July 24 a friend sent him the images Ranveer Singh had shared on Instagram and Twitter. He said when he zoomed in on one of the photographs, he realised that the actor’s private parts were visible. The photo had gone viral.

“Our country is a land of culture and such photos could influence children who have a ‘craze’ for movie actors and actresses,” said Tekchandani.

Tekchandani said, on further enquiry, that he found Singh had done the photoshoot for Paper magazine and would earn a lot of money from it. He added the photoshoot will also influence youngsters, who were struggling to get into the film industry, to resort to similar measures to earn money and fame.

According to a note issued by the Mumbai police then, the actor, in order to ‘earn big money’, had ended up ‘being a poor influence on young children and society at large’ by posting his nude photos from his photoshoot. With this act, he has also attempted to outrage the modesty of women, the note read.

The Gully Boy actor was booked under sections 292 (sale of obscene books), 293 (sale of obscene objects to young persons) and 509 (act intending to outrage modesty of women) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), along with Section 67A of the IT Act, which deals with publication of any material that contains sexually explicit act or conduct.

In the current photoshoot, Ranveer Singh paid homage to actor Burt Reynolds’ iconic 1972 nude photoshoot for Cosmopolitan magazine.

Paper magazine has in the past done a similar nude photoshoot of Kim Kardashian in November 2014.