YouTuber and content creator Praneeth Hanumantu was arrested by the Telangana’s Cyber Security Bureau from Bengaluru, on Wednesday, July 10. Praneeth was booked by the Telangana police for making sexually coloured remarks on the reel of a man and a child, posing as father and daughter. Praneeth is reportedly the son of IAS officer H Arun Kumar, who is working as Special Commissioner of Agriculture, Andhra Pradesh.
Earlier this week, Praneeth and his friends –who go by the pseudonyms – Burra Yuvaraju, Adi, and Dallas Nageshwar Rao – aired a live stream on his YouTube channel Phanumantu (which has almost 1,82,000 subscribers). While reacting to the reel involving a father and daughter, Praneeth and his friends sexualised the duo’s relationship, leading to wide outrage on the internet. The said video has now been made ‘private’.
Clips from the video stream were shared on X, with several netizens seeking strict action for insensitive remarks regarding child sexual abuse.
On July 6, actor Sai Dharam Tej, nephew of Andhra Pradesh Deputy CM and actor Pawan Kalyan, flagged the issue to Chief Ministers of both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Along with Sai Dharam Tej, actors Rohith Nara, Manchu Manoj, Sudheer Babu, Vishwak Sen, Karthikeya also joined the campaign demanding harsh punishment for normalising child sexual abuse.
Praneeth played a small role in Sudheer Babu’s film Harom Hara. Following the controversy, Sudheer Babu said that he feels “disgusted” for casting him in the film, and apologised for the same.
“For good or bad, I'm not a social media guy nor do I keep up with things. I feel so disgusted by the fact we had #PraneethHanumanthu casted in #HaromHara. Sincere apologies from me and my entire team. We didn't know what a pathetic creature this man is. It wasn't in my knowledge.
I couldn't even dare to go through the entirety social media has exposed about him. Those things are not even worth our puke but they should have our attention at this hour. We should make sure these sick minds shouldn't have a platform for the filth they wanna spread. This isn't freedom of speech by any means,” Sudheer Babu shared on X.
With mounting criticism, on July 6, Praneeth sought an apology saying that he edited out the “problematic part” from the video. “Unconditionally and unambiguously apologetic about the lapse in judgment. As a creator, my attempt is always to put a smile. Unfortunately this time I have crossed the line between what is dark and what is distasteful,” he said.
Later he released another apology video saying, “I made the mistake of making fun of a sensitive topic like child sexual abuse. My intent was not to normalise child sexual abuse or pedophilia… People are wrongly projecting as we had sexualised the relationship of a real father and daughter. The definition of comedy keeps changing. And it was a gross misjudgement on my part to consider this to be funny.”