New Delhi: Twitter suspended actor Kangana Ranaut’s account permanently on Tuesday for “repeatedly” violating its hate speech policies. The suspension came hours after the actor posted a provocative tweet on the post-election violence in West Bengal. She was followed by over 3 million people on the microblogging platform.

The actor’s suspension caused a furore on social media, with both her supporters and critics tweeting about it. #KanganaRanaut was the top trend in India through the day, garnering over 165k tweets by 8.30pm.

Shortly before her suspension, Ranaut had also posted a short video, stating that she was “distressed” by the violence. She later defended her controversial statements in two Instagram posts.

“We’ve been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behaviour that has the potential to lead to offline harm. The referenced account has been permanently suspended for repeated violations of Twitter Rules specifically our Hateful Conduct policy and Abusive Behaviour policy. We enforce the Twitter Rules judiciously and impartially for everyone on our service,” a Twitter spokesperson said.

Kangana Ranaut later defended her controversial statements in two Instagram posts.

She shared the same video on Facebook’s photo sharing platform, where she has 7.7 million followers. The actor has posted several controversial statements in the past. Her sister and manager Rangoli Chandel was also suspended from the platform in April 2020 for an inflammatory tweet.

Twitter’s hateful conduct and abusive behaviour policies prohibits users from engaging in “targeted harassment” and also warns against “inciting” others to harm anyone on the basis of their gender, ethnicity, race or religious affiliation, among other things.