Netflix wades into political row: Cong leader claims 'Sacred Games' portrays Gandhis in bad light

New Delhi, July 10: A Kolkata based Congress leader on Tuesday filed a complaint against Netflix's first Indian original series 'Sacred Games' and Nawazuddin Siddiqui for portraying Gandhis in bad light. He said that it is tarnishing Rajiv Gandhi's image in Bofors scandal case.

Rajiv Sinha, in his letter to the Kolkata Police, said that Nawazuddin as Ganesh Gaitonde "abused our late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi calling him fattu, which translated as pu*** in the subtitle". He also accused the makers of the show of "misrepresenting facts during his regime".

Sacred Games (now streaming on Netflix) is an eight-part crime drama based on the acclaimed - and lengthy, at 900 pages - novel by Vikram Chandra. On the evidence of the first few episodes, it sprawls from thriller to dense character study to brooding meditation on the roots of India's political corruption.

The series contains episodes referring to the 1975 Emergency, imposed by Indira Gandhi, the government's forced sterilisation plan to the Bofors scandal and Rajiv Gandhi's gaffe in the 1985 Shah Bano case, when he was accused of choosing politics over women's rights.

The Congress leader's complaint says that the series has crossed all limits of decency and told a television channel that he suspected political motives behind such dialogues.

Meanwhile, the officer in charge at Kolkata's Girish Park police station has accepted the complaint which is yet to be verified.