HT City

I feel Kangana just hijacked the whole thing

- ■ rishabh.suri@htlive.com

Iwas trolled by so many of Kangana Ranaut’s fans. I thought I had made my point, but there were so many saying all kinds of stuff, so I said there’s no point carrying on with it, I took it off. Not that I think I wrote anything wrong,” says actor Samir Soni when asked about what prompted him to delete his Instagram post he put up on Sunday.

Soni had hit out at Ranaut for her recent interview on actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death. “... I’m against anyone (including Kangana) who are using his death to settle their own personal scores. Deplorable… Stop shooting your gun off a poor dead man’s shoulder...” he wrote.

Talking about what made him write this in the first place, the actor, 51, says, “My personal opinion, which differs from a lot of people, was that stories around Sushant’s mental health are extremely valid, given the number of suicides we have among youngsters. I thought that should have been discussed (in the TV interview). But Kangana just hijacked the whole thing, and people went on a witch hunt against certain names holding them responsibl­e ignoring the main issue of mental health that should have been the focus.”

The deleted post, he says, did garner some support. He adds that the way Ranaut spoke, made him feel that she had “issues” with all the people she mentioned in her interview, and she was “using Rajput’s death to get even”.

He explains, “I’m not saying Sushant wasn’t under pressure. So, what a responsibl­e person would have done is — attack these people, fair enough — but also explore other possibilit­ies.”

Soni admits he got “really upset” when Ranaut levelled allegation­s against a host of people including Javed Akhtar, Mahesh Bhatt and Aditya Chopra. “It was just ‘me, myself and I’. It came down to Mahesh Bhatt throwing chappals, Javed Akhtar saying suicide… it has become a tamasha,” asserts the actor, who was part of a debate on the same news channel a day after Ranaut’s interview.

Rishabh Suri

 ??  ?? Samir Soni
Samir Soni

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