Padma Shri Kangana Ranaut has downgraded her rating of Mumbai and, as is her wont, blithely walked into the eye of a Twitter storm on Thursday, declaring that Mumbai had begun to feel like 'Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.' This was after Shiv Sena member of Parliament and executive editor of the party mouthpiece Saamna Sanjay Raut wrote that she ought to refrain from returning to the city if she feared Mumbai Police more than the 'movie mafia'. "We kindly request her not to come to Mumbai. This is nothing but an insult to Mumbai police. The Home Ministry should take action over it,” Raut wrote.
He took umbrage over her saying that she would need security from Himachal or Haryana or Central police and would not accept protection from Mumbai Police, to expose the alleged 'drug mafia' in Bollywood because she feared Mumbai Police more than the 'movie mafia'. Raut further said her 'treachery' was shameful since this was the city which had given her so much.
Treating this as an 'open threat', Kangana Ranaut@KanganaTeam tweeted: "Sanjay Raut Shiv Sena leader has given me an open threat and asked me not to come back to Mumbai, after Aazadi graffiti in Mumbai streets and now open threats, why Mumbai is feeling like Pakistan occupied Kashmir?"
Sena party spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP Priyanka Chaturvedi told a news channel that the actor had been putting out negative tweets since June 14, the day actor Sushant Singh Rajput died, adding two days ago, Kangana had shared a screenshot of the Mumbai Police Commissioner that was fake and now she had compared Mumbai to PoK.
Clearly, if a person felt unsafe about the industry they worked in, the city that they lived in and its police force, understandably, every single Mumbaikar would suggest the same thing to her, felt Chaturvedi, saying this comparison to PoK was clearly unacceptable.
Another Twitter user shared a video of Kangana from 2017, where the actor had declared that Mumbai was 'relatively safe, not completely safe and elsewhere, it is bad' and how Mumbai was different. Clearly, Mumbai has fallen from her eyes in the space of the last few years.
Meanwhile, BJP MLA Ram Kadam and other leaders came to her defence, saying Mumbai police were not keen on providing security to the 'Rani of Jhansi', though she was ready to expose the alleged Bollywood drug nexus.
Jumping into the controversy, Maharashtra Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant warned the actress should first run a background check on Kadam before seeking help due to his 'dangerous' history.
