On charges of sensationalizing news, four Bollywood industry associations and 34 producers on Monday filed a civil suit against Republic TVÂs Editor- in- Chief Arnab Goswami and Pradeep Bhandari. A similar suit has also been filed against Editor-in-Chief Rahul Shivshankar and Navika Kumar of Times Now.

Some of the popular studios include Shahrukh KhanÂs Red Chillies Entertainment, Salman Khan Films, Aamir Khan Productions, Ajay Devgn Films, Karan JoharÂs Dharma Productions, Anushka SharmaÂs Clean Slate Filmz, Zoya Akhtar’s Tiger Baby and Farhan AkhtarÂs Excel Entertainment have joined hands to file suits against television heads and anchors.

The film producers, who have come together against Times Now and Republic, have alleged that these channels are over- sensationalizing news to gain TRP’s. The suit argued that even though the Sushant Singh Rajput death case was transferred to CBI, the channels indulged in putting out news reports suggesting that the complainants would also be in the dock, while nothing of that sort happened. Moreover, the heads of the news channels have been accused of violating the Right to Privacy of people associated with the film making even while they had nothing to do with the Sushant Singh death case.

The channels used derogatory words and insinuations for Bollywood such as dirt, scum, druggies, filth, and expressions, while giving a call for cleaning the “dirt”, stated the law-suits, which listed assertions, including “all the perfumes of Arabia cannot take away the stench and the stink of this filth and scum of the underbelly of Bollywood” used by the news anchors.

According to the lawsuit, the news channels have been Âopenly flouting the Programme Code framed under Section 5 of the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act,1995 contained in Rule 6 of the Cable Television Network Rules,1994.