Actor Kangana Ranaut has been issued a legal notice for her comments on Bilkis Bano, the 82-year-old woman who is fondly known as the “Dadi of Shaheen Bagh”, ANI reported on Wednesday.
Bano has featured in Time magazine’s list of The 100 Most Influential People of 2020 for protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh neighbourhood.
In a now deleted tweet, Ranaut had claimed that Bano can be hired as a protestor for Rs 100. “Ha ha ha, she is the same dadi who featured in Time magazine for being the most powerful Indian...And she is available in 100 rupees,” Ranaut had tweeted on November 29, according to Times Now. “Pakistani journos have hijacked international PR for India in an embarrassing way. We need our own people to speak for us internationally.”
A lawyer from Punjab’s Zirakpur town sent the legal notice, demanding an apology from Ranaut for her tweet within seven days. The lawyer in his notice said that Ranaut wrongly identified an old woman at the farmers’ protests as “Bilkis Dadi”. Bano also corroborated that she was at her home in Shaheen Bagh and was not the one seen in the photo.
“It is to inform you that the said lady is not a fake lady,” the legal notice said. “Her name is Maninder Kaur and she belongs to village Bahadur Garh…”
The notice also said that Ranaut mocked the farmers’ protest with her tweet. “By tweeting in such a manner, the same also points out that the protest which is being conducted by the farmers, is being conducted by bringing people on rent,” it read.
Bano came to join the farmers’ protest at Delhi-Haryana’s Singhu border on Tuesday evening, but was taken away by the police. “I am here to support the farmers,” she had said at the protest site. “They supported us during the protests in Shaheen Bagh, and now we are here for them. We urge the government to roll back the new farm laws.”
Thousands of farmers from several states in India, especially Punjab and Haryana, have been protesting for the seventh day at Delhi’s borders. They have been demonstrating against the Centre’s agriculture laws. The Centre has called for a fourth round of talks with the farmers on December 3, after the meeting between the government and over 30 union leaders on Tuesday failed to break the deadlock.
Follow live updates on the farm law protests here.
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