The New York Times chose to lead with it: the star who played the Everyman but was also “a figure in India’s fleeting #MeToo reckoning”. The BBC ~chose to close ~ended its 995 word obituary with 59 words on “his career was not without controversies.”

The case against Nana Patekar, the 75-year-old actor who died of a cardiac arrest at his Goa home on Thursday, was eventually closed by the police for lack of evidence. In 2025, a magistrate disposed of the case on grounds of limitation; the police complaint was filed a decade too late.

News of Patekar’s death resulted in tributes pouring in from the president to the prime minister. He was cremated with state honours in Pune, powerful in life and in death.

In the Indian press there was the not unexpected whitewashing. Legendary, fiery and acclaimed were freely tossed about to sum up the life of the 75-year-old. But by and large there was little mention of the 2018 #MeToo movement in which he was a powerful accused. If contribution to cinema matters, if good deeds carry weight, how can media claim to offer a complete assessment of his life while glossing over #MeToo?

Patekar’s achievements and histrionic talents are not in doubt and are not being called into question. Intense performances across a career spanning five decades in Hindi and Marathi cinema and theatre? Check. An international debut with Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay? Check. Three National Film awards and a Padma Shri. Yes, check.

But being good at something—acting or sport or writing or painting—does not ever become a license to bad behaviour, let alone sexual assault. There is no artistic license available to successful and........

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