Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika Padukone, and the curious case of faulty car that landed them in legal trouble

Dubai: So here we are: Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone are now accused of fraud because a car that they endorsed didn’t behave on the road.

A lawyer in Rajasthan says her Dh100,000 car had a serious defect — the RPM shot up, the speed didn’t. Dangerous, no doubt. But instead of just chasing the company and the dealer who admitted to the issue, she’s gone after the celebrities smiling from billboards. The FIR is filed under cheating. Section 420. Because apparently, endorsing a car means endorsing its engineering.

Yes, because clearly the stars who appear in glossy ads must also personally test-drive every car, check the pistons, and sign off on the RPM before you take it home.

This isn’t just absurd, it’s almost comical. What’s next — suing George Clooney if your Nespresso machine sputters? Dragging Beyoncé to court because your Adidas sneakers wore out too soon? Hollywood’s seen shades of this lunacy before.

Kendall Jenner became the face of tone-deaf advertising with Pepsi. Kim Kardashian got hauled up over crypto ads. But here’s the thing — they didn’t design the products, they just sold the dream.

And that’s what endorsements are: selling aspiration. Nobody really believes Shah Rukh has been tinkering under Hyundai hoods since 1998, or that Deepika joined in 2023 to oversee Alcazar’s engineering specs. Yet here we are, with the absurd suggestion that their star power equals technical approval.

Sure, hold companies accountable. Consumers deserve safe cars, not rolling roulette wheels. But Bollywood actors being made scapegoats for faulty engineering? That’s less justice, more theatre.