Mumbai: Actor-turned-politician Kangana Ranaut and filmmaker Hansal Mehta recently engaged in an online squabble over demolition of her Mumbai house and Kunal Kamra’s ‘gaddar’ row.
It began when Hansal responded to ‘hypocritical’ jibe from an X user for not speaking out when Kangana’s Bandra property was demolished in 2020, on his post in which the former extended support to the stand-up comedian amid the backlash for his ‘gaddar’ comment against Maharashtra’s Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. “Was her house vandalised? Did goons enter her premises? Did they do this to challenge her freedom of expression or for alleged FSI violations? Please enlighten me. Maybe I don’t know the facts,” the filmmaker asked.
Responding to his post, Kangana called him “bitter and stupid” and accused him of spreading “dumb lies and agendas.” She also elaborated on the sequence of events, leading to the demolition, and advised him to stay out of “matters related to my ordeals.”
“They called me names like haramkhor, threatened me, served a notice late in the night to my watchman and next morning before courts could open bulldozers demolished the entire house. The high court called the demolition completely illegal. They laughed at it and raised a toast to my pain and public humiliation,” she wrote.
Slamming Hansal, she added: “It seems your insecurity and mediocrity has not only made you bitter and stupid but it had blinded you as well, it’s not some third class series or atrocious films that you make, don’t try to sell your dumb lies and agendas here in the matters related to my ordeals, stay out of it.”
To which, filmmaker simply replied, “Get well soon.”
They called me names like haramkhor, threatened me, served a notice late in the night to my watchman and next morning before courts could open bulldozers demolished the entire house. High court called the demolition completely illegal.
They laughed at it and raised a toast to… https://t.co/eUF54JQqOp— Kangana Ranaut (@KanganaTeam) March 25, 2025
Later in another post on X, Hansal asked Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok: “Since people are talking I wanted to know how the incident with Kunal Kamra, the venue and the part demolition at Kangana’s home are similar or different. @grok please enlighten me because when I ask those who indulge in whataboutery they stop responding.”
Check Grok’s response: “…both seen as retaliation against critics, linked to Shiv Sena, and involve BMC actions. They differ in method — mob violence in Kamra’s vs. direct BMC action in Ranaut’s — and context: 2025 Shinde-BJP rule vs. 2020 MVA govt. Both raise free speech concerns, but Kamra’s adds illegal mob acts.”
Kunal Kamra’s 2025 incident (Shiv Sena mob vandalized a venue after his joke about Eknath Shinde, followed by BMC demolition) and Kangana Ranaut’s 2020 case (BMC demolished her home after criticizing the govt) share similarities: both seen as retaliation against critics, linked…
— Grok (@grok) March 25, 2025
On Monday, the filmmaker had said that the Kamra incident was not new for Maharashtra, while drawing parallel with the alleged assault on him and the subsequent apology which he had to tender after his 2000 film ‘Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar’ was released. He also recalled that his office was vandalised by the then-undivided Shiv Sena. “Twenty-five years ago, loyalists of the same (then undivided) political party stormed into my office. They vandalised it, physically assaulted me, blackened my face, and forced me to apologise publicly—by falling at the feet of an elderly woman—for a single line of dialogue in my film.”
“The line was harmless, almost trivial. The film had already been cleared by the Censor Board with 27 other cuts. But that didn’t matter. At the so-called “apology” venue, at least 20 political figures arrived in full strength to oversee what can only be described as a public shaming—with 10,000 onlookers and the Mumbai Police watching in silence.”
“That incident didn’t just bruise my body. It bruised my spirit. It blunted my filmmaking, muted my courage, and silenced parts of me that took years to reclaim,” he added.
