Karan Johar is at the receiving end of a volley of criticism after the news of Sushant Singh Rajput’s death broke. The actor died by suicide on Sunday and it is alleged that ‘professional rivalry’ may have had a role to play. Actor Swara Bhasker and filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma have defended Karan, calling the social media backlash ‘height of idiocy’.
With the debate around nepotism reignited, Karan has unfollowed several accounts on Twitter. Currently, he follows just eight accounts, with four of them belonging to his banner Dharma Productions and its CEO, Apoorva Mehta. The only three actors followed by him at present are — Akshay Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan. He also follows Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
On Sunday, Karan shared a picture with Sushant and said that the news of his death came as a ‘huge wake-up call’ to him. The filmmaker said that he blamed himself for not being in touch with the actor for the past year, despite feeling at times that something may have been amiss.
“I blame myself for not being in touch with you for the past year….. I have felt at times like you may have needed people to share your life with…but somehow I never followed up on that feeling…will never make that mistake again…we live in very energetic and noisy but still very isolated times …some of us succumb to these silences and go within…we need to not just make relationships but also constantly nurture them,” he wrote.
“Sushant’s unfortunate demise has been a huge wake up call to me …to my level of compassion and to my ability to foster and protect my equations…..I hope this resonates with all of you as well….will miss your infectious smile and your bear hug,” he added.
Meanwhile, Swara Bhasker defended Karan and his protégé Alia Bhatt and said that holding them responsible for Sushant’s death was the ‘height of idiocy and hypocrisy’.
Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma also argued that blaming Karan was ‘ridiculous and just shows lack of understanding of how film industry works’. “Just want to say this to the ignorant social lynch mob that @karanjohar is a bigger victim in this context compared to their ill perceived and suddenly discovered victim Sushant,” he tweeted.
