Old video of a Kashmiri Pandit woman lashing out during ‘Shikara’ movie screening is being attributed to ‘The Kashmir Files’ - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
March 17, 2022
A post with a video and a collage of images is being circulated on social media claiming it as visuals of a Kashmiri Pandit woman slamming ‘The Kashmir Files’ movie for portraying fake propaganda to incite the communal violence between Hindus and Muslims. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of a Kashmiri Pandit woman slamming ‘The Kashmir Files’ movie for portraying fake propaganda to incite communal violence.
Fact: The video shared in the post shows a Kashmir Pandit woman lashing out at Bollywood Producer and Director Vidhu Vinod Chopra at the ‘Shikara’ movie screening held in February 2020. The woman accused the director of commercialising the Kashmiri Pandits’ plight and for not portraying the actual suffering of the community including the genocide, mass rapes and mass murders committed by Islamic radical groups. The other two images shared in the post are related to the recently released ‘The Kashmir Files’ movie. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
Video:
On observing the post carefully, we could see a watermark on the video with the text, “Reaction to Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Shikara movie which secularised massacre of Kashmiri Pandits”. When we searched for this video using these keywords, a video with similar visuals was found published by the ‘Viral Bollywood’ entertainment YouTube channel on 07 February 2020. ‘Viral Bollywood’ reported it as visuals of a Kashmiri Pandit woman lashing out at Bollywood film director and producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra at Shikara movie screening. Several other entertainment YouTube channels have also published this video with a similar description in February 2020. They can be seen here and here.
Reporting the complete details of this incident, ‘India Today’ published an article on 08 February 2020. According to the article, at the special screening of ‘Shikara’ movie held on 07 February 2020, a Kashmiri Pandit woman broke down after watching the movie and lashed out at director Vidhu Vinod Chopra for not portraying the actual suffering of the Kashmiri Pandit community including the genocide, mass rapes and mass murders committed by Islamic radical groups. The woman reportedly slammed Vinod Chopra for commercialising the Kashmiri Pandits’ plight and said, “As a Kashmiri Pandit, I disown your film, I disown it”. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that the video shared in the post is old and not related to ‘The Kashmir Files’ movie.
Images:
The two other images shared in the post show recent pictures from the ‘The Kashmir Files’ screening. The first image shows ‘The Kashmir Files’ movie director Vivek Agnihotri interacting with Kashmiri Pandits while the other picture shows the Delhi audience’s response to the recently released ‘The Kashmir Files’ movie.
To sum it up, an old video of a Kashmiri Pandit woman lashing out at Vidhu Vinod Chopra at the ‘Shikara’ screening linked to ‘The Kashmir Files’ movie.