Everyone on India’s social media knows the story by now. Actor Anushka Sharma and her husband, cricketer Virat Kohli, were travelling in a car in Mumbai when they spotted a person throw a piece of plastic on the road from his vehicle. Sharma pulled up next to the culprit, rolled down her window and schooled the man for littering on the roads. Kohli captured the incident on his phone and posted the video (above) on twitter.
Sharma is seen in the video asking the man why he was throwing garbage on the road and scolding him: “Don’t throw garbage on the road. Please be careful. You can’t just throw plastic around like that on the streets. Use a dustbin.”
Inevitably, the video went viral on social media. But, perhaps unexpectedly, the man at the receiving end of the diatribe spoke up too, suggesting that he was the victim. Identifying himself as Arhhan Singh, he admitted to being careless in a Facebook post (below), but went on to criticise Sharma for “ranting and yelling like a crazy roadside person”.
Even Singh’s mother posted on Instagram, defending her son’s actions and criticising those of Sharma and Kohli.
Social media users had a mixed response to the video on social media. Some appreciated the effort of the power-couple, while others reduced it to an act of “attention seeking”.
Kohli responded to the trolls, writing, “Lot of people who don’t have the courage to do something like this find it funny. Everything for people nowadays is meme content. Shame.”
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