The actress is upset after being trolled for criticizing a quarantine facility in Goa, a place she now calls home
Debarati Sen (BOMBAY TIMES; May 21, 2020)

Pooja Bedi has been in a social media storm ever since she tweeted about the condition of quarantine facilities that her fiancé, Maneck Contractor, and she were subjected to after their recent journey from Mumbai to Goa. Around 7 pm on May 16, the couple reached Goa and was asked to wait at the border till 9.30 pm. After this, they were taken to the district hospital in Mapusa, where they stood for two hours in a queue in order to get tested for Coronavirus. They were then escorted to a quarantine facility in Calangute, where they were asked to stay while they awaited their results. On May 17, around 6.30 pm, their results came out negative, after which they were allowed to go home.

Pooja had tweeted a video, recounting her experience at the quarantine facility and highlighting its unhygienic conditions. She was trolled for the post, with people accusing her of being “fussy” and using celebrity status to enter Goa.

Talking about the quarantine facility, Pooja says “If you see the video, you will understand my outrage. We were travelling from a sanitised home, in a sanitised car, hoping to go to yet another sanitised home in Goa, and then, we are subjected to facilities like that. Forget sanitising, the facility was not even clean and lacked basic hygiene. In a quarantine facility, proper sanitisation is absolutely essential.”

About the backlash she received, Pooja says, “I didn’t want healthy people to go into the facility, get infected and bring the virus into Goa. My intention was to reveal the condition there and it should have been taken in the right spirit. However, I was trolled for being an ‘outsider’ and a ‘celebrity’. I’m used to being trolled, but this was disheartening. People were insinuating that we had used influence to get into Goa, which is not true.”

Pooja says that she and Maneck had applied online and uploaded all documents for inter-state travel. She adds, “My fiancé is a Goan. All our properties and businesses are registered in Goa, which is our home now. We also got permission from the Maharashtra Police to travel to Goa. We had the necessary screening certificates.”

“We chose not to ask for a single favour and conducted ourselves like law-abiding citizens with all documents in place. I love my fellow Goans, but a celebrity entering the state should not be viewed with prejudice. How can they call us outsiders? We have created these borders, but the virus doesn’t see borders. It’s absurd to have that kind of reaction from people where they say ‘go back to the state you belong to’. We are not outsiders in any state, we are Indians,” says Pooja.