Veteran actor Shabana Azmi has weighed in on the incident involving her colleague and newly-elected BJP MP Kangana Ranaut, who was allegedly slapped and abused by a woman CISF constable at the Chandigarh airport. Azmi expressed her disapproval of the celebration surrounding the incident, despite her lack of personal affection for Kangana Ranaut.
“I have no love lost for Kangana Ranaut. But I can’t find myself joining this chorus of celebrating ‘the slap’. If security personnel start taking the law into their hands, none of us can be safe,” Azmi tweeted early on Saturday.
Her comments come amid ongoing legal tensions between Kangana Ranaut and Azmi’s husband Javed Akhtar. In 2020, Javed Akhtar filed a defamation case against Kangana Ranaut, accusing her of tarnishing his reputation with remarks she made about Sushant Singh Rajput’s death in a news interview. In response, Kangana Ranaut filed a counter-complaint against Javed Akhtar the following year, alleging insult to modesty.
The incident occurred on Tuesday as Kangana Ranaut was undergoing a security check at the Chandigarh airport before boarding Vistara flight UK707 to Delhi.
Ranaut, who recently won an election in Himachal Pradesh’s Mandi, claimed that a constable approached her, hit her in the face, and verbally abused her. Kangana Ranaut reported that when she questioned the constable, the latter responded that she supported the 2020 farmers’ protests.
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A viral video of the incident shows the accused constable, Kulwinder Kaur, explaining her actions to bystanders at the airport. Kaur stated that her objections stemmed from Ranaut’s controversial remarks during the farmers’ protests, specifically a statement where Ranaut allegedly claimed that protesters were paid small sums of money to participate.
“Kangana made a statement that farmers were protesting in Delhi because they were paid Rs 100 or Rs 200. At the time, my mother was one of the protesters,” Kaur can be heard saying in the video.
Kangana Ranaut previously faced backlash during the farmers’ protests when she mistakenly identified an elderly woman protester as Bilkis Bano, a notable figure from the Shaheen Bagh protests. Ranaut had claimed in a now-deleted tweet that the woman was “available for Rs 100” to participate in protests.
Following the incident at the airport, Kulwinder Kaur was suspended and taken into custody. An FIR was filed against her, and the CISF ordered a court of inquiry into the matter.
