Bollywood actress Kangana Ranaut has hit out at the makers of Vijay Varma's recently-released web series, IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack, as the show stirred up a massive controversy after the hijackers were given Hindu names -- 'Bhola' and 'Shankar'.
For the unawares, the show is based on the real-life hijack incident of 1999, and netizens pointed out that the terrorists were identified as Muslims post the incident. A section of social media users also accused director Anubhav Sinha of distorting facts and 'misleading' the audience.
Now, Kangana took to her X account and reacted to a post on IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack. She accused the makers of 'distorting' real life events to 'suit their politically motivated sinister motives'. The actress also rued how filmmakers, wanting to show historic facts, have to face censorship.
It may be mentioned that the release of Kangana's film Emergency, based on the life of former Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi, has been postponed as the censor board demanded several cuts in the film.
Kangana wrote on X, "Law of the land is that one can show unimaginable amount of violence and nudity on OTT platforms without any consequence or censorship, one can even distort real life events to suit their politically motivated sinister motives, there is all the freedom for communists or leftists across the world for such anti national expressions but as a nationalist no OTT platform allows us to make films that revolves around the integrity and unity of Bharat, it seems censorship is only for some of us who don’t want tukde of this nation and make films on historic facts. It’s hugely demotivating and unjust."
What is the controversy?
The show tells the story of the longest hijack in the history of India. It is based on the true events of 1999 when an Indian passenger flight was hijacked by terrorists, who demanded the freedom of militants in exchange of letting the passengers onboard the flight leave unharmed.
Post the incident, the five hijackers were identified as Ibrahim Athar, Shahid Akhtar Sayed, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Zahoor Mistry, and Shakir, who were members of a Pakistan-based terrorist organisation. However, in IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack, the terrorists can be seen identifying themselves as 'Bhola' and 'Shankar', and one even called himself 'Burger'.
This did not go down well with the audience, who questioned Anubhav Sinha for changing the names of the terrorists.
Besides Vijay Varma, the show also stars Naseeruddin Shah, Pankaj Kapur, Patralekhaa, Dia Mirza, Arvind Swamy, and others. It released on Netflix on August 29.
