Virat Kohli hit a brilliant 65 in India’s match against South Africa and even though the side lost the contest (and the series), people were appreciative of the former captain‘s performance.
Among those celebrating, were his wife Anushka and kid Vamika. The two were spotted clapping for Virat from the stands, and their pictures soon started doing rounds on social media.
This, simply should not have happened.
For starters, it was wrong on the cameraman’s part to capture Vamika’s face when both Anushka and Virat have maintained that they want privacy for their child and would appreciate it if the media refrains from taking pictures of her.
Secondly, people circulating these photos should have thought twice about doing something like that. There are hundreds of thousands of posts on social media with zoomed-in pictures of her face and that should have been avoided at all costs.
As of now, things have reached a point where both Anushka Sharma and Virat Kohli have had to put up stories on Instagram, saying:
Hi guys! We realise that our daughter’s images were captured at the stadium yesterday and widely shared thereafter. We want to inform everyone that we were caught off guard and didn’t know that the camera was on us. Our stance and request on the matter stays the same. We would really appreciate if Vamika’s images are not clicked/published for reasons we have explained earlier (sic).
This is a shame considering she and her husband had categorically stated earlier:
We seek privacy for our child and would like to do our best to give her a chance to live her life freely away from media and social media. As she is older, we cannot restrict her movement and hence your support is needed so kindly practice (refrain) in the matter. A special thank you to fan clubs and people of the internet for going out of your way to not post images. It was kind and highly mature of you (sic).
As the matter becomes big, people are asking why Anushka was there with Vamika in the stadium if she did not want to be captured.
That’s an unfair question to ask. Of course, she is going to be there to support her husband, it’s the media’s responsibility to not direct the camera at her when she is with her kid. The fact that someone is out in the open doesn’t automatically mean that you can take their pictures and put them up for everyone to see.
As for “we did not know that Anushka was caught off-guard”, it’s always better to ask or to wait and see if historically a person has maintained a tough stand against something.
There is some support also pouring in for Virat, Anushka, and Vamika, and here are a few tweets to show that.
Vamika is a child and she is very young to make decisions for herself. Her parents are taking care of those and broadcasters/fans must respect whatever they decide to do.