Inside Bollywood’s Toxic Paparazzi Culture: Vulgar Gaze, PR Pressure and the Death of Celebrity Privacy

A Growing Culture of Entitlement

This year alone, the paparazzi has dominated the headlines multiple times for highly objectionable behaviour. A rowdy group of photographers openly mocked and body-shamed Mashable India host Siddharth Aalambayan for apparently blocking their frames while he was interviewing actors Ayushmann Khurrana, Rakul Preet Singh, and Sara Ali Khan. The incident sparked widespread criticism online, not just for the photographers’ hostility, but for the three actors themselves, who drew flak for failing to step in while the host was being shouted at in front of them.

Shortly after, a chaotic crowd deeply angered superstar Salman Khan. Photographers not only flouted his privacy during a sensitive visit to a hospital but also actively disrespected the medical facility, aggressively calling out to the superstar by his film titles.

Alongside these high-profile altercations remains the routine influx of voyeuristic “guess who” shots, where rogue pages post objectifying close-ups of female celebrities from behind. At a recent event in Mumbai, actor Neha Dhupia confronted some paps, demanding that they stop the highly intrusive practice of taking “back shots”, where photographers film female celebrities from behind at objectifying angles as they walk away.

Another recent flashpoint involved a distasteful post targeting Sara Tendulkar, who explicitly called out the pap, calling him “disgusting” and posting on her Instagram, “This is not journalism. Leave us alone.”

“I actually texted Sara Tendulkar recently regarding someone she referred to as a paparazzi photographer,” Chawla reveals. “I told her directly, ‘He is not a pap.’ That guy doesn’t even go out on the field; he simply lifts content from real photographers or buys it, slaps his own text on it, and posts it on his social media handle.”