Kareena's bare-back poster irks Shiv Sena

Another Karan Johar release is facing the music, this time from Shiv Sena. The party has objected to the bare-backed posters of Kareena
Kapoor from the film ‘Kurbaan’.

More than 100 Shiv Sainiks took to streets and tore down posters of the film in Juhu, Marol and other parts of Andheri on Friday. A month back, MNS had objected to the use of the Mumbai’s old name, Bombay, in Johar’s ‘Wake Up Sid’; he had to bend over backwards to the chauvinists and the film had to be screened with a disclaimer.

Friday’s protests were led by Sena activists Jitendra Janawale in Juhu and Subhash Kanta Sawant in Marol. Sawant said: ‘‘We objected to the posters as they showed the actress semi-nude and we found to be in very bad taste. It violates our Indian culture.’’

The Sainiks also put a sari around Kareena in some of the posters. A group of Sainiks even headed for Kareena’s residence and wanted to present a sari to her. But a police officer said: ‘‘We deployed our people near the actress’s house but nothing untoward happened.’’ Kareena was said to be out for a shooting and was not at home.

Additional commissioner of police (West) Amitabh Gupta said the Khar police station had been asked to register a case against the offencers. An industry insider said political parties were picking on soft targets to get some mileage and the MNS’s impressive showing in the recent Maharashtra assembly polls was ‘‘forcing’’ the Sena to look for rabble-rousing issues.

‘‘The film industry has always been a soft target as the government does not take action against political parties,’’ the industry insider said.

‘‘The government took a proactive decision in only one case, providing Anurag Kashyap security; but that was because they knew that the director would never apologise to MNS,’’ another Bollywood insider said. Kashyap, reacting to a question from a news channel about his film ‘DevD’ being vulgar, said RajThackeray’s words were much more vulgar than his films.

(TOI)