Veteran Bollywood actor Rishi Kapoor has been a revelation on Twitter, with his unerring wit and sensible opinions on various matters.
Update: the actor is now back and tweeting after Salman Khan was relieved of his 5-year sentence. However, less than three months after he re-joined the social network, Kapoor had posted this on Thursday.
The Salman Khan hit-and-run case verdict, which has dominated online conversation since Wednesday (after the actor was sentenced to 5 years in prison), had been indirectly responsible for this development. After the quantum of punishment was announced, Twitter went into a tizzy and divided itself into two distinct camps: those who lauded the verdict and those who felt bad for Bhai (as Khan is popularly known). The superstar was found guilty of culpable homicide in a 2002 hit-and-run incident, in which Nurullah Mehboob Sharif was run over by an allegedly inebriated Khan after he lost control of his Land Cruiser.
Some responses got more attention than the others, such as tweets by singer Abhijeet Bhattacharya and jewellery designer Farah Khan Ali that put the blame on the pavement dwellers. Obviously, they got skewered for it.
However, another person who rose in strong defence of Beloved Bhai was TV actor Ajaz Khan, who appeared on Times Now and registered his protest against the verdict.
Kapoor made some strong remarks against these opinions.
However, Ajaz — who has appeared on seasons 7 and 8 of reality show 'Bigg Boss' as well as TV serials like 'Rahe Tera Aashirwaad' and 'Kahaani Hamaaray Mahaabhaarat Ki' — has his own formidable fan following that did not react well to Kapoor's tweets.
They began politely.
Then, after Ajaz replied to Kapoor directly, the trolls saw that the water was great and jumped right in.
And then it got nastier...
... and nastier.
Presumably taken aback by all the viciousness, Kapoor tweeted out a clarification.
But the troll train had gathered too much momentum by then and refused to slow down.
Even after he announced his decision to go off Twitter, citing disrespect and abuse as reasons for doing so, it wasn't the end of it.
Anyway, he's back now, so.... yay.
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