During his attack on the central government at the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena rally on Sunday, Raj Thackeray ended up ruffling feathers in the film industry as well. The MNS chief, known for his aggressive stance, questioned the state funeral that was accorded to Bollywood film star Sridevi, alleging that the media attention given to her demise was a trick to divert attention from the multi-million PNB-Nirav Modi scam.
During his address to party workers at a rally at Shivaji Park, Dadar, he questioned, “Sridevi was a great actor, but what did she do for the country that her body was wrapped in the tricolour?” He alleged, “Nirav Modi was the talk of the town, then issue of Sridevi came in. This was brought to change the issue. When a person like Sridevi dies, you wrap her in tri-colour and you say you did that because she was a Padma Shri. It was all fault of the Maharashtra government.” He claimed that the media was under tremendous pressure from the BJP-led government to divert people’s attention.
Thackeray also alleged that films like Toilet Ek Prem Katha and PadMan were a hidden propaganda for government schemes. He added that Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar, who starred in both the films, was trying to follow the footsteps of Manoj Kumar, an actor who was popularly known as "Bharat Kumar".
“But Akshay Kumar is not even an Indian citizen. He holds a Canadian passport and Wikipedia describes him as an Indian-born Canadian actor,” the fiery Raj pointed out.
Naturally his comments have not gone down well with majority of citizens believing it was insensitive to attack a woman who is no more.
In terms of numbers, Sridevi’s funeral was estimated to have attracted the highest number of mourners, ranking on par with the previous biggest funeral processions of the legendary singer Mohammed Rafi (July 1980: around a million mourners), and India’s first superstar Rajesh Khanna (July 2012: a little less than a million mourners).
Last year during a media interaction, Akshay Kumar had been asked about his Canadian citizenship, to which he had said – ‘It’s an honorary status’.
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