Mani Ratnam and 48 other personalities from the film and other industries have been booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including those relating to sedition, public nuisance, hurting religious feelings and insulting with an intent to provoke breach of peace.

The FIR was filed at the Sadar police station in Muzaffarpur in Bihar after the Chief Judicial Magistrate Surya Kant Tiwari passed an order on a petition filed by local advocate Sudhir Kumar Ojha. In his petition, he had stated that the personalities have "tarnished the image of the country and undermined the impressive performance of the Prime Minister" besides "supporting secessionist tendencies".

Mani Ratnam, Anurag Kashyap, Ramachandra Guha and Aparna Sen among 49 others from various fields wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi bringing to his knowledge the growing incidents of mob lynching in the name of religion and food habits of people. internet users are of the opinion that the celebrities had asked the Prime Minister to save the nation from such incidents of hatred but are themselves have been accused of anti-nationalism.