Javed Akhtar ‘humiliated, embarrassed’ by Kangana Ranaut’s statements against him

New Delhi: Javed Akhtar, a lyricist-writer, expressed his 'humiliation' when Kangana Ranaut said in an interview that he had threatened to ruin her career which would cause her to commit suicide. In a defamation case he had brought against the actor, Akhtar testified before a magistrate court on Wednesday.

Javed Akhtar reportedly refuted Kangana's claims and claimed that her remarks made him feel very embarrassed, which pushed him to launch a case against her. He remembered Kangana making the remarks in an interview after Sushant Singh Rajput's suicide became a "talking point" in the media, Indian Express reported.

He claimed Kangana had previously accused him of threatening her, but he had chosen to ignore it. “In the magazine interview, she only said I had threatened her, but I did not react to it. She had not said that I threatened her by saying that she would have to commit suicide. But in a television interview in July 2020, she improvised and as everyone was speaking about suicide, she said all this,” he said. “This was not earlier. Suicide had become a buzzword after Sushant Singh Rajput’s death and she used it to make an allegation that I was from some suicide brigade and that I was forcing her to commit suicide. If it was so, she would have mentioned it in her first statement in the magazine.”

According to Javed Akhtar, had it not been for the fact that "many people had an extreme reaction to it," he too would have "forgotten" about the televised interview. He claimed that individuals in Lucknow had called him and expressed surprise at his actions, saying they didn't expect this from him. He added, “I was very upset and may have chosen to ignore it. We are lazy people who are concerned with the creative field. It took me 4-5 months to file this case as I saw that it was not going away. I was under tremendous pressure. I was feeling humiliated. People did not let me forget it, and it was getting bigger and more and more embarrassing, so I had to file this complaint.”

Kangana said that her interaction with the songwriter came after she and her Krrish 3 co-star Hrithik Roshan engaged in a public verbal argument. When Hrithik was still married, Kangana referred to him as her "ex," but he later refuted this. Javed claimed that he had spoken with both Kangana and Hrithik to arrange for an apology and a truce. “I tried to convince her by saying that only people are having fun at hearing all this while her name is being muddied and it would affect her career. However, Ranaut was not receptive to my suggestion as I had a very formal relationship with her, so I was not able to insist after a point and I told her to forget about these things. We parted on a friendly note,” he said.

Kangana had told Pinkvilla in the aftermath of Sushant’s suicide, “Once Javed Akhtar had called me to his house and told me that Rakesh Roshan and his family are very big people. If you don’t apologise to them, you will have nowhere to go. They will put you in jail, and eventually, the only path would be that of destruction…you will commit suicide. These were his words. Why did he think if I don’t apologise to Hrithik Roshan, I would have to commit suicide? He shouted and yelled at me. I was shaking in his house.”

Last year, when she showed up to give a statement in the ongoing defamation case, she repeated these claims in court. On June 12, Kangana's lawyer will cross-examine Javed Akhtar.