On Tuesday, movie star Anushka Sharma caught a man throwing out litter from the window his luxury car, and took him to task.
In a 17-second-long clip that went viral, she gave a furious dressing down to the man, identified as Arhhan Singh, sitting in a chauffeur-driven sedan.
Arhhan Singh later described her as a “crazy roadside person”. Many started trolling Anushka. Her cricketer-husband Virat Kohli soon jumped in to back her and her cause.
In Bengaluru, she found widespread support.
Elli AvrRam
The actor says Anushka was right in shaming Arhhan Singh. “It is everybody’s duty to stop littering,” she says.
Pooja Chopra
The actor says the video is a message loud and clear to all those in chauffeur-driven cars who don’t think twice before littering. “The man who threw out plastic should have apologised. It’s not about Anushka flaunting her celebrity status. I would have also done it had I been in her place,” she says.
M K Raghavendra
The well-known film critic feels celebrities have, for once, proved useful. “Anybody who sees people throwing garbage on the street must take exception to it. Throwing garbage is a social nuisance and I think it should be ideally treated as a minor criminal offence.”
Rahul Rajasekharan
Actor and Mr India first runner-up, says, “She wasn’t rude and was only telling the man not to throw garbage. Educated people throwing garbage on the street is unacceptable.” People in Mumbai have been working towards cleaning their beaches, and movements across the world are campaigning against the use of plastic. She did the right thing by posting the video on social media, he says.
Raghu Dixit
The singer and composer says he has protested against anything that “goes against basic civic sense.” The people he confronts, he says, sometimes apologise, and at other times get defensive. “It’s not about being a celebrity. We should decisively act towards making our country litter-free,” he says.
Guru Prasanna, Advocate, HC, Karnataka
It was natural for Anushka to question somebody throwing garbage on the street. The damaging part was perhaps Virat Kohli’s tweet calling Arhhan Singh, the man in the car, “brainless.” Arhhan Singh and his family have taken offence to the public shaming, but they don’t really have a legal case against Anushka and Virat. “There is no action here against which a person can claim any sort of injury. If there is a conscious campaign to bring down somebody’s reputation then it could have legal implications.”
Swaraj Barooah, senior programme manager, Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru
“It may be poor form to shame a private person, as the point about littering could be made as easily without revealing the identity of the person. But it would be incorrect to claim a legitimate expectation of privacy while committing a public act, which is littering, in this case. On the question of whether this is harassment: This is unlikely to be seen as a legal case of harassment, as it is just one act, and not one of many acts. Nor do Virat and Anushka have a history of going about and ‘shaming’ people online.”