Actor and model Milind Soman was booked by Goa Police on 6 November for obscenity and for publishing and transmitting obscene material in electronic form.
Soman, who turned 55 on 4 November, posted a photograph of him running nude by a beach in Goa, captioned “55 and running!” The photograph was clicked by his wife.
“A case has been registered at Colva police station under IPC Section 294 (obscene acts and songs) and Section 67 of IT Act (publishing and transmitting obscene material in electronic form) against actor Milind Soman,” South Goa SP Pankaj Singh said.
The case was booked on the complaint of a political outfit named Goa Suraksha Manch. “He has used Goa for is cheap publicity and acted foolishly on a public beach,” Sameer Khutwalker, president of Goa Suraksha Manch and complainant in the case, said.
On 5 November, Poonam Pandey and her husband were booked for obscenity, after they shot a controversial photoshoot at a restricted dam site, with the government’s Water Works Department filing a complaint in that case. They subsequently got bail from a court in south Goa the same day.
In the bail order, the judicial magistrate stated, “A professional shoot towards the making of a video or a film, in my considered opinion cannot be outright termed as obscene or immoral merely because some members of the public say so, or there is public outcry about the same. Films and videos are covered under the right to expression, which is a fundamental right granted by our Constitution.”
In 1995, the Social Service Branch of Mumbai Police had booked him and model Madhu Sapre after they posed nude, wearing only a pair of shoes and a python wrapped around them, for an advertisement campaign. They were acquitted after a 14-year-long legal trial. Earlier this year, Soman posted the old image on social media and had wrote, “what the reaction would have been if it had been released today…”
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