Mumbai: Bollywood actor-politician Urmila Matondkar, who had quit Congress last year and joined Shiv Sena earlier this month, opened up about she has been targeted by trolls over her religious identity. She said her husband, Mohsin Akhtar Mir, who is a Kashmiri businessman is being called a ‘terrorist’ and a ‘Pakistani’ by social media trolls.
Calling the constant troll attacks on her husband, Mohsin Akhtar, and his family as “unfortunate”, Urmila also opened up about how her Wikipedia was edited repeatedly to claim that Urmila had converted to Islam post her marriage.
In a conversation with Mojo Story, Urmila said that she was not prepared for the vicious trolling of Mohsin and his family. “He was called a terrorist, a Pakistani. I mean, there is a limit to where it should go… They have even infiltrated my Wikipedia page and they have gone and put my mother’s name as Rukhsana Ahmed and my father’s name as Shivinder Singh, two human beings who must be living somewhere in India but I don’t know of. My father’s name is Shrikant Matondkar and my mother’s name is Sunita Matondkar,” she said.
“To top it all, my husband is not only a Muslim but a Kashmiri Muslim. We both follow our religions in an equally staunch way. That gave them a bigger platform to troll me and constantly target him and his family. It was very unfortunate,” she added.
Urmila Matondkar and Mohsin Akhtar met in Manish Malhotra’s niece’s wedding and fell in love. The couple got married in a private ceremony in March 2016.
Urmila Matondkar’s Bollywood journey
Urmila started her career in Bollywood as a child artiste and worked in films such as Kalyug and Masoom. She made her debut as a lead role with Narsimha in 1991. She is known for films such as Rangeela, Judaai, Satya, Kaun, Pyaar Tune Kya Kiya, Bhoot and Ek Hasina Thi.
Her political journey
Urmila Matondkar, 46, had joined the Congress in March 2019 in presence of Rahul Gandhi. She had unsuccessfully contested the national election from the Mumbai North constituency. In the same year September, she quit the Congress.