Riteish Deshmukh takes the ice bucket challenge

After Hollywood celebs like Cara Delevingne, Eva Longoria, Mark Zuckerberg, Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez and Bill Gates, the ice bucket challenge bug has now bitten Bollywood with actor Riteish Deshmukh accepted Sania Mirza's challenge and going through with it. He has now challenged actors Akshay Kumar, Sidharth Malhotra and Abshikek Bachchan, among others. He even tweeted about it. Over 2 U my friends @akshaykumar @juniorbachchan @S1dharthM @PulkitSamrat @AshishChowdhry -U have 24 hours.

The connection with India started when Tennis star Rohan Bopanna who was nominated by Indian-American tennis player Amrit Narasimham took the challenge, and in turn nominated Benguluru FC team and Rahul Bose. Players of Benguluru FC lined up at the Bangalore Football stadium on Monday to take up the challenge, they in turn nominated Sania Mirza, who challenged  Mahesh Bhupathi and Ritesh Deshmukh.

This is the new internet craze of summer 2014, which features a list of A-list celebs and business leaders drenching themselves in buckets of ice and water, all to raise awareness of motor neurone disease (also known as AIS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease), which affects around 5,000 people in the UK. 

After each star has filmed themselves enduring several seconds of icy pain, they then nominate up to three more well-known figures to undergo the same public humiliation. The trend went viral after Pete Frates, a former Boston College baseball player tipped to become a Red Sox star who had his career cut short by the disease, nominated fellow Boston athletes to take part. This then spread to celebrities including Cara Delevingne, Eva Longoria, Mark Zuckerberg, Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez and even Bill Gates.