On Monday, 34 individuals and four associations associated with Bollywood filed a suit at the Delhi High Court against Republic TV and Times Now over the news channels' drugs case reportage. They are angry that Bollywood has been described in unsavoury terms by the news channels, under the aegis of Arnab Goswami, Navika Kumar and Rahul Shivshankar. The plea wants the HC to restrain the media houses from making or publishing irresponsible, derogatory remarks against Bollywood.

The suit has elicited a range of responses on social media. "This Bollywood lawsuit against Times Now is a pure eyewash. The industry is based out of Mumbai and so are Times Now, Republic. Why was the suit filed in Delhi HC?" asked Saket Gokhale, an activist. Senior journalist Bhupendra Chaubey tweeted, "When was the last time we saw the film industry getting united like this? Truth is that many of our fraternity have ruined the hard work which is often put in by the entertainment industry. Bad eggs are everywhere, doesn't mean you tarnish an entire industry."

Others, on their part, have lashed out at Bollywood for trying to kill freedom of speech.

It seems Bollywoodians are trying their best to save the image of the industry. For months, ever since the passing away of Sushant Singh Rajput, the film industry has only received negative publicity.

But there is an inconvenient truth out there. Bollywood's image has been feeble for several years. Large sections of the citizenry think of several actors, filmmakers and producers as sick hypocrites who are selectively outraged, who tolerate the sexual exploitation of women in the industry, who whitewash the sins of invaders in their pseudo-historical films, and who make horribly dishonest movies like 'Sanju'.

"The last time the film industry was this united was to stand in solidarity with Sanjay Dutt, a criminal sentenced on terror charges. Do you see a pattern?" wrote social media influencer Shefali Vaidya, reacting to the suit filed at Delhi HC.

Several Bollywood celebs have been seen as duplicitous. In fact, anti-Bollywood commentators say that Times Now and Republic TV have only been giving a tit-for-tat against an industry that has happily labelled them as 'Godi Media' to besmirch their image. Hindi film celebs routinely label India itself as a hate-filled society and make films that whitewash Kashmiri terrorists (like 'Haider').

Suit or no suit, Bollywood's image is irreparable now. They can pull off an eyewash by approaching the court. But, in the court of people, Bollywood is a gone case.