Complaint Filed Against Anurag Kashyap's Short Film In Netflix's Ghost Stories

Anurag Kashyap's segment in Netflix's Ghost Stories continues to gather attention. The short film follows Sobhita Dhulipala's character who goes through a miscarriage, has landed in legal trouble. Netflix India has received a complaint against the short film from the 2020 anthology series.

Reportedly, the complaint is one of the first examples of grievances to be registered after the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting formulated the Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021, that were set into place earlier this year.

According to a Mid-Day report, the complainant raised objection to a scene in the short film where Sobhita Dhulipala's character eats a foetus after suffering a miscarriage. The complainant claimed that the scene did not give an insight into the film and could have been avoided. "The scene is not required for the story, and if the creators wished to add such a scene, there should have been a trigger warning for women who have gone through the trauma of miscarriages," the complaint read.

According to the new rules set in 2021 by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the complaints must be registered within 24 hours and addressed at the earliest. Anurag Kashyap reportedly reacted to the new complaint in a now-deleted post. MediaNama reported that the filmmaker took to his Instagram stories on Tuesday (July 27) and wrote, "So it has started... A complaint came to Netflix on Ghost Stories. This is the end."

The Mid-Day report quoted Netflix India spokesperson as saying, "As this was a partner-managed production [RSVP Movies and Flying Unicorn Entertainment], we reached out to the production company to share the complaint."

Ghost Stories also features shorts from directors Zoya Akhtar, Dibakar Banerjee and Karan Johar. The anthology was a follow-up to the filmmakers' 2018 anthology Lust Stories, and was released on New Year's day in 2020.