Mumbai: Actor-turned-MP Kangana Ranaut recently reflected on a challenging chapter of her life, recalling how she was labelled a “witch” and accused of practising black magic.
Kangana faced such allegations, which are rare in the film industry, nearly a decade ago when her former partner, Adhyayan Suman, filed a case accusing her of physical and emotional abuse along with claims of occult practices.
Speaking on a recent podcast with ANI, Kangana revisited the controversy and said that many within the industry branded her a witch following the accusations.
She added that the period was marked by intense personal attacks on her character.
Without naming her ex-boyfriend Adhyayan, she said, “My ex who filed a case on me… and on top of that, kuch khade ho gaye ki ye to chudail hai. khoon peeti hai. Kaale kamre mein kaale parde lagake kaala jaadu karti hai (some people stood up and said she’s a witch, she drinks blood, she does black magic.) So there was a witch-hunting,.”
Adhyayan and Kangana were in a relationship around 2008-09 while working together on ‘Raaz 2’.
However, the case related to their fallout was filed several years la
ter, in 2015.
“There was evident and very apparent witch-hunting happening at that time, and I was hardly 26 or 27 years old. So when this is how they’re going to treat me, why should I make them look good…I have no reason to make them look good,” Kangana recalled.
The actor said she “was just doing the best I could” to get through that turbulent phase.
She added that she found strength in her professional successes, especially the critical and box-office triumph of her film ‘Queen’.
The 2014 comedy-drama, directed by Vikas Bahl and produced by Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane and Madhu Mantena, is among the few female-led Hindi films to cross the Rs 100-crore net mark at the domestic box office.
In 2016, Adhyayan also spoke about the reasons behind filing the case against Kangana years after their breakup.
“For a very long time, I hid the fact that she had been physically violent because if I had told them, my mum would have perhaps lost it. So I had to hide that. But eventually I had to come out and share it because the agony, the torture and the frustration were too much to bear,” he said.
Kangana made her Bollywood debut with ‘Gangster’ in 2006 and went on to earn widespread acclaim for her performances in ‘Fashion’, ‘Queen’, and ‘Tanu Weds Manu Returns’.
A four-time National Award winner and a recipient of the Padma Shri, she currently serves as a Member of Parliament from Mandi.
She was last seen in ‘Emergency’, a film she also directed, and in which she portrayed former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.