Remember when celebrities carried on their l’affaires du coeur in their bedrooms or in villas away from prying eyes? And when they cried blue murder because their liaisons and break-ups made it to the tabloids? Ah, those innocent times.

Today’s ‘celebs’ seem to think – and the media obliges – that their affairs gone sour are matters of national import. The West had set the groundwork for this during the very messy Mia Farrow-Woody Allen break-up. More recently, Angelina Jolie went to the press to announce that Brad Pitt had to be expelled from their mini-United Nations family. All these articles and interviews were carried in the main sections of publications as hallowed as The New York Times and Time magazine.

Well, India’s caught up. For the past year — and especially in the weeks preceding the release of Kangana Ranaut’s most recent film — there has been not one news channel, newspaper or website that has not interviewed Ranaut on her alleged affair with Hrithik Roshan. Going by Ranaut’s own words, this was a consensual relationship that tanked.

She claimed that she was ignored by Roshan and his family. And like most of us who have our hearts broken, she was most miffed. The only difference being that she had the desire and the privilege of appearing on primetime news, the front pages of newspapers and current affairs websites to share intimate details of the affair and the indifference of Roshan when he decided to call it quits.

For the past week, news channels have been running primetime debates on #Stalkergate and #KanganaHrithikBattle. Something perhaps easier to debate about than a GDP growth slowdown and Yogi Adityanath’s comments.

I do believe that Ranaut has gone where few other female celebrities have before and should be given credit for it. She refuses to pretend she is the Virgin Mary and has been unabashedly forthright about her sexual independence in an industry that expects its heroines to be nothing more than pretty faces.

But do we really need to read about her affair, not just with Roshan, but also with Aditya Pancholi — in such detail? And then applaud it as a feminist move?

The cherry on the cake was when I opened The Guardian last week to read not about farmer deaths in India or India’s stand on Rohingya refugees, but to see that the news from India was about ‘A Death In Bollywood’ — a detailed article on actress Jiah Khan’s death, who was found hanging in her apartment, in 2013.

Khan’s mother has claimed that she was murdered by actor Sooraj Pancholi, a case still under investigation. The article, though, is a one-sided case for the prosecution, which while making various absurd statements – eg. the Pancholis are a ‘Bollywood power family’ — also reveals details of grisly home abortions and an affair gone wrong.

The article, now being read by perplexed Guardian readers, who think that India has the strangest Third World problems, is a case for the prosecution parroted by Jiah Khan’s mother and sisters. An article which would make Blitz’s Russy Karanjia proud. But which would make Sooraj Pancholi, if guilty of simply breaking up with Jiah Khan, shudder in fear.

My limited point is when did it become kosher for national and international newspapers to run articles in their main pages based on allegations and insinuations by one celebrity against another? These are not matters of any public importance, and frankly are unsubstantiated claims made by one aggrieved party against another.

In Pancholi’s case, it could well be that he is guilty. But it could well be that he isn’t. In the Ranaut allegations, all that Roshan is guilty of is calling off a relationship and refusing to acknowledge it in public. Neither of which are crimes, or worthy of newsprint. If only the same fervour was shown in covering actual crimes by celebrities such as drunk driving or harbouring weapons.

What our worthy celebrities don’t realise is that the very same media they milk for their own good may well one day turn on them.