Riteish Deshmukh takes Ice Bucket Challenge, nominates Akshay, Abhishek

Zee Media Bureau/Anindita Dev

New Delhi: The ALS Ice bucket challenge has gone viral across the globe. The trend which kicked-off in the West, has now slowly found its place in India as well.Bollywood entertainer Riteish Deshmukh accepted the challenge on Tuesday and later on took to the micro-blogging site Twitter to nominate his friends Akshay Kumar, Pulkit Samrat, Sidharth Malhotra, Ashish Chowdhury and Abhishek Bachchan to accept the `Ice Bucket Challenge`. He has given all of them a 24-hour deadline.

I accepted @MirzaSania's ALS Ice Bucket Challenge - to spread awareness for ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) https://t.co/eYgRs33pdH

— Riteish Deshmukh (@Riteishd) August 19, 2014

Over 2 U my friends @akshaykumar @juniorbachchan @S1dharthM @PulkitSamrat @AshishChowdhry -U have 24 hours -tic tok https://t.co/eYgRs33pdH

— Riteish Deshmukh (@Riteishd) August 19, 2014

Riteish accepted the challenge after being tagged by ace tennis player Sania Mirza. This may all sound a lot of fun, but the idea behind this challenge, is quite noble. The challenge was started in order to promote awareness for ALS (Lou Gehrig`s Disease). The idea is that whoever takes the challenge has to pour a bucket of ice water on their head or donate a 100 dollars for the cause. The people who take the challenge have to also nominate others. Stars however are doing both. Hollywood's who's who shared their videos via various social sites. Following the trend, Riteish too shared the video on his Facebook page:

Post by Riteish Deshmukh.

Keeping the spirit of the ice challenge, Akshay and Pulkit have accepted the challenge.

@Riteishd challenge accepted!! The bomb's ticking!— Pulkit Samrat (@PulkitSamrat) August 19, 2014

@Riteishd Jagtap challenge accepted!!— Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) August 20, 2014

The concept which emerged in the west, has the entire Hollywood fraternity going bonkers over it and eminent celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Charlie Sheen, Justin Bieber and so on have been a part of it. This has already taken most of our Facebook feed by storm and can be seen catching up among our Indian celebs too. As the clock ticks on, let`s join in and say `Ice, ice baby`