Media365
Samay Raina’s show India’s Got Latent is in the line of fire for breaching the limits of freedom of speech and celebrating vile, perverted remarks in the disguise of ‘dark humour’. Amid the major controversy that has erupted, an old video of Samay confessing that he wanted the show to be ‘raw and uncensored’ has resurfaced. In the clip, the social media personality stresses that he makes most of his profits from his subscribers and he likes to keep it that way as selling the show to OTT platform would kill its ‘independence’. The comedian’s comments are startling, especially amid the ongoing controversy where one of the panellists on the episode Ranveer Allahbadia posed an incestuous question regarding parental intercourse which has sparked wide outrage.
India’s Got Latent started streaming for free on YouTube last year and was later put on a subscription basis. A few episodes, or parts of them, are kept behind a paywall and are available only to Samay Raina’s subscribers at a nominal fee of ₹59 per month. In an old video, the social media personality could be heard talking about how he profits from the channel only because of the subscribers.
In the now-viral video, Samay says, “Just because of memberships I am in profit. And I am also happy because of that because OTT platforms are throwing blind money at me to stream the show on their platform. But the problem with that is that they will control the content. Because of memberships, I can be independent.” Samay stressed that he is aware that some of the content might stir controversy, but he was still determined to keep it raw. He added, “I will not change anything in this show, I don’t want to remove the jokes or beep the cuss words. I want to keep all the content, despite the fact that it might create controversy. I want to keep the show raw.”
YouTube removes India’s Got Latent controversial episode featuring Ranveer Allahbadia
After a massive outrage on social media, demands to ban and boycott Samay Raina and India’s Got Latent were widespread. Several complaints were filed requesting government intervention in the matter. As a result, the Ministry of I & B issued a directive a YouTube to pull down the controversial episodes.
Within hours of the directive, the controversial episode of the show featuring Samay Raina, Ranveer Allahbadia, Apurva Mukhija, Ashish Chanchlani and Jaspreet Singh was taken down. However, clips from the episode are still circulating
online.
