Legal notices have been sent to Kangana Ranaut by members of the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) and Shiromani Akali Dal for her now deleted tweet in which she falsely identified septuagenarian farmer Mohinder Kaur, who was participating in the ongoing farmer protests, as Shaheen Bagh activist Bilkis Bano. She had also claimed that the two women are being paid Rs 100 to protest.
The DSGMC notice, sent by advocate Harpreet Singh Hora on behalf of Jasmain Singh Noni, said that Kangana had spread "unverified information", reported ANI.
It said that when her residence and office in Mumbai was demolished by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), she used social media to bring attention to the matter and claimed that her fundamental rights had been violated. Similarly, it is the farmers' right to protest and Kangana cannot claim a right to demean and insult them, the notice added.
The notice pointed out that Kangana's claims have been debunked by several news reports and the actor had no right to defame an old woman for her own political mileage.
The notice called the post a "hate tweet" that had lowered the reputation and image of farmers before the world.
Kangana responded to the news by saying it is the work of the "film mafia".
As for the Shiromani Akali Dal, the Punjab-based party sought an 'unconditional apology' from Kangana for 'derogatory tweet calling the aged mother of a farmer as a woman available for ₹100'. Akali Dal national spokesperson Manjinder Singh Sirsa tweeted a picture of the notice.
A criminal petition was filed in the Bombay High Court on 3 December, seeking the suspension of Kangana's Twitter account. The same day, lyricist Javed Akhtar recorded his statement before the Andheri Metropolitan Magistrate in Mumbai in the defamation case he has filed against the Queen actor.
Kangana has also been involved in a war of words with actor and singer Diljit Dosanjh. The Udta Punjab actor earned praise from many for calling her out for her propensity to spread misinformation. Kangana had earlier posted a picture on Twitter claiming that it was of Bilkis Bano, aka Shaheen Bagh's Bilkis Dadi, who was being bribed with Rs 100 a day to participate in the ongoing farmers' protest. However, the woman in the photograph was actually 73-year-old Mohinder Kaur, a resident of Bathinda’s Bahadurgarh Jandian village. The tweet has since been deleted.
In response to this tweet, Diljit posted a clip of a BBC interview with Mohinder and tweeted in Punjabi: "Here's your proof @KanganaTeam. Nobody should be so blind as to go around saying anything they like."
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