A child actor from Maharashtra, who has spent more than a decade in Bollywood, was saved, at least to an extent, from sexualization and exploitation by the popular Twitter account ‘Gems of Bollywood’. The account complained about an objectionable portrayal of the minor girl to the national child commission. The commission intervened and approached the child’s mother, who has been forced to apologise.
What happened
On 20 October 2022, @GemsofBollywood called out a sub-genre in Bollywood where so-called ‘child artistes’ are made to wear revealing clothes, shoot with alcohol and play ‘love interest’ of much older men.
See the screenshot of the tweet below:
To give you the context, the child actor in question, Riva Arora, had featured in a romantic song with 38-year-old man in an Instagram video.
On 23 October 2022, chairman of the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) took cognizance of the matter. The NCPCR chairman, Priyank Kanoongo, issued a notice to the Maharashtra Child Commission for further action.
He directed the body to contact the minor’s family and also provide them necessary counselling. He also directed the police to look into such matters concerning minors.
See the screenshot of Kanoongo’s tweet below:
On 18 November 2022, the mother of the minor apologized to the NCPCR for making her daughter perform such an act.
Through her Instagram account, @nishriv, she wrote:
“I Nisha Arora tender my apology for the video I made for my daughter Riva Arora’s account where I used alcohol setup and which created so much problem and bad image in the society. I heartily believe being a actor and role model for the society we should portray good image in the society, I wanted to request all the child actors and their parents to avoid such kind of videos. I will take care in future and I have given a apology letter to the NCPCR and given them all the clarification related to the issue.”
See the screenshot of her post below:
After the apology by her mother, the minor’s Instagram account showed that it had been deactivated. It currently shows the status “User not found”.
It should be recalled here that after the public outrage against the minor’s video, her mother had brazened it out. She dismissed all the concerns saying it was disheartening for her to see reputed media channels spreading lies about her daughter.
On 23 October 2022, incidentally the same day the child commision intervened, she wrote this on her Instagram:
“I was calm, but not anymore. The allegations on my daughter’s age are completely false and it’s a saying that false news travels faster than ever and many reputed social media channels proved it. It is sad to see and disheartening for me.
Atleast you should have cross checked with me before upload on reputed pages. My daughter is an actor and working in industry since years.“
The Instagram Reel, which caught controversy
The child actor is known for her roles portraying children in critically acclaimed movies like Uri and Gunjan Saxena. She also appeared in various daily soaps prior to this. When she did all these roles in the movies and television, she was less than ten years old.
In October 2022, she was cast alongside actor Karan Kundrra, who played her boyfriend. Riva was shown as a woman having multiple affairs. The setup for the video involved a bar counter, and Riva having a drink with Karan.
Soon after the video was posted from her Twitter account, @rivarora, it started receiving public backlash. People started pointing out her age. Various rumours began floating on the Internet that she had undergone hormonal treatments to look like an adult.
Here are some tweets from the archives:
The outrage followed a previous wave of criticism directed towards her family for featuring her alongside Mika Singh in a music video. The makers of her recent song ‘Disco Wali Raat’ switched off the comments section fearing backlash.
@GemsofBollywood is a popular Twitter account with more than 3 lakh followers, and is well-known for reviews and criticism of the Bollywood content. The account is dedicated to calling out all obscenity, and genres of promoting paedophilia and rape-molestation, which have been a major part of Bollywood since its inception. The platform is known for speaking in a firm voice against crimes on women and children.
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