7 months ago
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The Supreme Court connected Friday (December 5, 2025) dismissed a petition accusing writer Arundhati Roy and her steadfast Penguin Random House India (Hamish Hamilton) of glamorising baccy usage by featuring a photograph of her with a beedi connected the beforehand screen of her publication Mother Mary Comes to Me to beforehand the work.
A Bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi said neither the writer nor the steadfast required the photograph to beforehand the publication successful the market.
The tribunal pointed retired that the steadfast has already utilized a disclaimer, clarifying that the screen photograph should not beryllium viewed arsenic an encouragement to smoke.
Cover leafage of Arundhati Roy's memoir, 'Mother Mary Comes To Me'
The Chief Justice asked the counsel for the petitioner, a lawyer named Rajasimhan, represented by elder advocator S. Gopakumaran Nair, whether helium had work the publication and had a antithetic presumption astir its contents.
Mr. Kumar said his client’s occupation was restricted to the beforehand cover, and for that, helium had recovered researching the contents of the publication unnecessary.
On statutory wellness warning
The elder counsel argued the disclaimer published did not magnitude to a statutory wellness warning.
“The statutory informing should beryllium ‘tobacco causes cancer, baccy kills’, and present determination is simply a woman who is simply a celebrated writer with a photograph connected her publication screen showing her enjoying a beedi. We bash not cognize if it is simply a ganja beedi… It is conscionable excessively much!” Mr. Kumar exclaimed.
Justice Bagchi said the photograph was not meant arsenic an advertisement, requiring a statutory wellness warning.
“The disclaimer is not a statutory warning. The disclaimer is lone meant to disabuse immoderate idiosyncratic of a presumption that this representation of the writer with a cigaret successful her manus is to beforehand smoking. In short, the photograph is not an advertisement of a baccy merchandise which requires statutory warning,” Justice Bagchi reasoned.
Mr. Kumar contended the disclaimer was really an “anticipatory bail” taken to support the writer and the steadfast from ineligible consequences nether Section 5(3) of the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act (COTPA).
Justice Bagchi observed that the photograph was not utilized to beforehand the publication successful bid to pull Section 5(3) of the COTPA.
The Kerala High Court had earlier dismissed the petition, asking the lawyer to attack the Steering Committee constituted nether the COTPA with his concerns. On Friday, the CJI remarked the High Court had really been “merciful” to the petitioner.
Dismissing the case, the Chief Justice noted that “both the writer and the steadfast are renowned names. They bash not necessitate the photograph to beforehand themselves”.
The petition had raised apprehensions that Ms. Roy’s actions would person a antagonistic power implicit the younker and the speechmaking public, peculiarly the teenagers and women. It had argued that the photograph would marque a sizeable dent successful nationwide anti-tobacco campaigns, including the National Tobacco Control Programme. It had sought the withdrawal of each copies of the publication with the existent screen and re-publish it without the photograph.
