Mumbai police summon Kangana Ranaut in Javed Akhtar defamation case
Mumbai: Mumbai police have summoned Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut in a defamation case filed by veteran writer-lyricist Javed Akhtar, an official said.
Kangana has been asked to appear before the Juhu police here on Friday, the police official said.
Akhtar filed a criminal complaint against Kangana in November last year before the Andheri metropolitan magistrate for allegedly making defamatory and baseless comments against him in television interviews.
He claimed that she dragged his name while referring to a "coterie" existing in Bollywood, in TV interviews after the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput in June last year.
The complaint said Kangana had falsely claimed that Akhtar threatened her to keep silent about her alleged relationship with actor Hrithik Roshan. It noted that Kangana's remarks had tarnished Akhtar's public image.
The court on January 17 allowed the police time till February 1 to file a report of their probe into the defamation complaint.
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Congress using hijab issue to pacify minority anger, alleges Karnataka LoP R Ashoka
Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.
Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.
He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.
Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.
He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.
Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.
He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.
