Rishabh Suri (HINDUSTAN TIMES; July 22, 2020)

“I was trolled by so many of Kangana Ranaut’s fans. I thought I had made my point, but there were so many saying all kinds of stuff, so I said there’s no point carrying on with it, I took it off. Not that I think I wrote anything wrong,” says actor Samir Soni when asked about what prompted him to delete his Instagram post he put up on Sunday.

Soni had hit out at Ranaut for her recent interview on actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death. “... I’m against anyone (including Kangana) who are using his death to settle their own personal scores. Deplorable… Stop shooting your gun off a poor dead man’s shoulder...” he wrote.

Talking about what made him write this in the first place, the actor, 51, says, “My personal opinion, which differs from a lot of people, was that stories around Sushant’s mental health are extremely valid, given the number of suicides we have among youngsters. I thought that should have been discussed (in the TV interview). But Kangana just hijacked the whole thing, and people went on a witch hunt against certain names holding them responsible ignoring the main issue of mental health that should have been the focus.”

Soni felt that the reason behind the drastic step Rajput took was ‘worth examining’ as it could have helped a lot of people.

The deleted post, he says, did garner some support. He adds that the way Ranaut spoke, made him feel that she had “issues” with all the people she mentioned in her interview, and she was “using Rajput’s death to get even”.

He explains, “I’m not saying Sushant wasn’t under pressure. So, what a responsible person would have done is — attack these people, fair enough — but also explore other possibilities.”

Soni admits he got “really upset” when Ranaut levelled allegations against a host of people including Javed Akhtar, Mahesh Bhatt and Aditya Chopra. “It was just ‘me, myself and I’. It came down to Mahesh Bhatt throwing chappals, Javed Akhtar saying suicide… it has become a tamasha,” asserts the actor, who was part of a debate on the same news channel a day after Ranaut’s interview.

Soni, responding to writer Apurva Asrani’s tweet that he “lied on the news” about Rajput’s psychiatrist calling him bipolar, says that he didn’t make it up. “Just google it. Even if he wasn’t bipolar, it’s at least worth examining what he was being treated for. It’s not like I fabricated. I said if this is one of the stories that came out, isn’t it good journalism to at least enquire? Let’s assume those stories are wrong, he wasn’t bipolar, the doctor wasn’t treating him. Even then we know he was being treated for depression or some mental issues. We should just explore that,” he says.