A court in India has dismissed a petition filed against a magistrate’s order discharging Shilpa Shetty in a 2007 obscenity case over actor Richard Gere kissing her at a public event in India.
In March 2007, Shetty and Gere attended an Aids awareness event in Mumbai where the Pretty Woman star kissed her cheek several times.
Soon after the event, the incident was met with protests by radical Hindus who considered Gere’s actions to go against Indian values.
At the time, India’s Supreme Court also issued an arrest warrant for Gere accusing him of participating in “cheap publicity”.
Following the backlash, Gere issued an apology claiming that he had been trying to demonstrate that kissing didn’t cause HIV transmissions.
In January 2022, the obscenity charges against Shetty were dismissed.
The charges were deemed “groundless” and the court ruled that Shetty was indeed subjected to unwanted advances from a Hollywood celebrity.
However, the prosecution filed a revision application before the sessions court claiming the magistrate “erred in discharging the accused” and that the order was “illegal, bad in law and against the principle of natural justice”.
On Monday (10 April), sessions judge SC Jadhav dismissed Gere’s petition and discharged Shetty.
This case has been ongoing in the Indian legal system for over 15 years.
The court said that no evidence of Shetty having shared or published the said act was produced by the police.
“A woman being groped on the street or touched on a public way or in public transport cannot be termed as accused or participative to an extent of mental culpability and she cannot be held for illegal omission to make her liable for prosecution,” the court said.
