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

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Mumbai: Bollywood actress Kangana Ranaut and her sister Rangoli Chandel appeared before the Bandra Police on Friday (January 8), pursuant to a Bombay High Court order in connection with a sedition case filed against them, a lawyer said.

"As directed by the Bombay HC, they reached the Bandra Police Station at around 1 pm to record their statement," lawyer Ravish Zamindar, advocate representing the complainant Munawwarali S. A. Sayyed, told IANS.

After recording their statement for over two hours, the sisters came out and Kangana tweeted a video statement on her visit to the police station.

"Why am I being mentally, emotionally and now physically tortured? I need answers from this nation... I stood for you, its time you stand for me. Jai Hind," she tweeted.

"If you are anti-India you will find a lot of support, work/rewards, and appreciation. If you are a nationalist then you will have to stand alone, be your own support system and appreciate your own integrity. After hours of grilling at the police station on my way to Bhopal," Kangana tweeted after her statement was recorded.

It maybe recalled that in November 2020, a division bench comprising Justices S.S. Shinde and M.S. Karnik had accepted advocate Rizwan Siddique's undertaking that the two Ranaut sisters would report to the Mumbai Police on January 8 in response to the summons served on them.

The court had also barred the two sisters from making any "instigating statements" on social media platforms to the subject matter in the FIR lodged by the police, Zamindar added.

The Bombay High Court orders came on a plea filed by Ranaut-Chandel seeking to quash the police FIR, lodged on October 17 on the directions of Bandra Court Metropolitan Magistrate J.Y. Ghule over alleged hateful social media posts made by the duo.

Following the FIR, the sisters were issued summons by the Bandra Police to appear on three different dates which they skipped on various grounds. After the third summon, they had moved the Bombay HC.

"Among the charges are those under Section 124-A (sedition) of the Indian Penal Code... besides spreading communal hatred and falsehoods. The police have already recorded the statement of Sayyed in this connection in October," Zamindar said.

A Bollywood casting director and fitness trainer, Sayyed had accused Kangana and Rangoli of defaming the film industry, portraying the people working in it in bad light with allegations of nepotism, drug addiction, communal bias, and attempting to drive a wedge between artistes of different communities, calling them murderers, insulting religions, etc. on social media and through their public utterances.

In his complaint, he also charged the Ranaut sisters with seeking to create a 'Hindu-Muslim divide' through objectionable comments, citing Rangoli's remarks like "make the mullahs and secular media stand in line and shoot them down; history may call us Nazis, who cares" to prove his point.