Manmarziyaan row: Taapsee Pannu goes on Twitter rampage after troll threatens to beat her with belt

Taapsee Pannu has joined her Manmarziyaan director Anurag Kashyap in lashing out at trolls after unapproved cuts were made to the film. Meanwhile, Abhishek Bachchan has said that it is ‘no big deal.

bollywood Updated: Sep 22, 2018 20:09 IST
Taapsee Pannu as Rumi in a still from Anurag Kashyap’s Manmarziyaan.

Taapsee Pannu has been protesting online about the forced cuts made on her new film, Manmarziyaan, along with director Anurag Kashyap. Her co-star, Vicky Kaushal, has also retweeted the links to an article by the film’s writer, Kanika Dhillon, in which she criticises the move.

The controversy began on Wednesday, when Kashyap wrote that he would not be removing any scenes from his film, against which an official complaint had been filed for allegedly hurting Sikh sentiments. The filmmaker, who is no stranger to controversy, said that it was technologically impossible for a film to be edited after release. However, the distributors, Eros, had other plans. Without the director’s approval they went ahead and removed certain scenes from the film.

Kashyap responded with a sarcastic tweet in which he said that all the problems of the Sikh community are hereby solved. He also made public the phone number of Eros chairman Kishore Lulla. Kashyap’s tweet was later taken down.

Throughout all this, he has found support in Taapsee, who has been on a Twitter rampage against trolls. While Vicky hasn’t overtly made any statement, he jumped to Taapsee’s defence when one Twitter user threatened to beat her with a belt. While the original tweet was deleted, Pinkvilla quotes it as having read, “I swear i wish i was her father, all i need is my belt and a jutti. Shittar mar mar ke I would of taken the actress vala bhoot out from her.”

Even actor Arjun Kapoor chimed in with support for Taapsee, and said that no religion condones violence.

“My religion never taught me to censor someone’s feelings. I don’t know who gave these bunch of self proclaimed religion saviours the authority to decide what a woman can think and what not. Did u? And if not will u stay quiet when they tell u what to think n what not! I won’t!” reads the pinned tweet on her page.

She also shared a picture of a turbaned man smoking in public, and commented, “Oops ! Can someone check for photoshop ???? Coz this definitely doesn’t happen in our la la land.” One of the scenes to be edited out of Manmarziyaan showed Taapsee and Abhishek Bachchan’s characters smoking.

Abhishek, meanwhile, has taken the opposite stand on the matter. Contrary to what his director and co-stars have been saying, Abhishek at the Jagran Cinema Summit on Friday said that, “Each individual has a right to react and if people have felt bad over some scenes, then I feel there is no harm in deleting those scenes from the movie unless it does not change the narrative of the film.”

Kashyap’s fellow producing partner at Phantom Films and director of Eros’ Bhavesh Joshi Superhero, Vikramaditya Motwane, slammed the decision. “The one time the censor board showed maturity and our spineless studios shat and ran. What a terrible precedent to set,” he wrote.

Manmarziyaan has received positive reviews, with its three leads’ performances being praised. The film has made over Rs 20 crore at the box office in one week of release. It should be noted that the film had been approved by the Central Board of Film Certification with the necessary anti-smoking disclaimers on screen.

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First Published: Sep 22, 2018 14:20 IST