Kangana Ranaut, sister Rangoli appear before Mumbai police in sedition case

According to police, the FIR states that through their tweets, the sisters tried to "malign the Indian Constitution and image of the Maharashtra government, hurt sentiments of Muslims and tried to create division between Hindus and Muslims".

Actor Kangana Ranaut and her sister Rangoli on Friday appeared before the Bandra police in connection with an FIR registered against them in October last year for ‘allegedly creating enmity between different groups of people’ through their social media posts.

The FIR was registered at the Bandra police station on the directions of a Metropolitan court hearing a private complaint against the sisters by a Bollywood casting director.

The Bombay High Court had directed the sisters to appear before the police on January 8 while granting them interim protection from arrest in the case.

“We will be recording their statements as part of the investigation into the FIR,” an officer said.

The sisters were booked under sections pertaining to committing malicious or deliberate acts with the intention of outraging religious feelings of citizens, sedition, promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence or language and common intention of the Indian Penal Code.

According to police, the FIR states that through their tweets, the sisters tried to “malign the Indian Constitution and image of the Maharashtra government, hurt sentiments of Muslims and tried to create division between Hindus and Muslims”.

The complaint was filed by Munawwar Ali Sayyed, a casting director and fitness trainer. In his complaint, he stated that he had worked with well-known film directors and had, for the past few months, been observing on social media that Ranaut “is continuously defaming Bollywood film industry and is portraying people working in Bollywood films as a hub of nepotism, favouritism, drug addicts, communally-biased people, murderers, etc” through her tweets and television interviews. “…(this) is creating a very bad image of Bollywood in the minds of people and even creating a communal divide and rift between people of two communities and in the mind of common man”.

He also stated that a rift was being created between artistes of different religions. The complaint referred to various tweets by Ranaut over the past few months, including a tweet where she referred to Mumbai as POK (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir).

The actress had then approached the Bombay High Court to quash the FIR. The HC then granted them interim protection from arrest and asked the sisters to appear before the police for investigation.

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