Mumbai: Arbaaz Khan recently opened up about his thoughts on the vile trolling that celebrities face time and again, for everything they say and how it, in turn, affects their mental health.
Post the unfortunate demise of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Singh Rajput in 2020, who died by suicide, several stars were targetted and brutally trolled online.
In an interview, Arbaaz Khan said that the allegations of ‘rampant drug use and sex’ appeared to be a part of a campaign and ‘instigated’. He added that the trolling was done by accounts with just one or two followers, as opposed to verified accounts with millions of followers.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Arbaaz said, “Up till now there were only two professions that were held in the highest regard- cricket and acting. Cricketers and stars remained protected. Cricketers still enjoy that protection. But now what has happened is that stars have been demystified. It’s like, ‘Oh you think you can speak against the government, we will show you that even your stars are no saints and we will run them down.’ It’s a campaign. So, it’s said that there’s rampant drug use and sex in the industry. So, ‘let’s expose them.”
This has been done intentionally because it can’t be that things have been happening for 100 years and in one year suddenly everything changed. It has been instigated, probably planned, and if you look at the people doing this they have one or two followers so they have actually opened the account to do this. It’s not that a person has six million followers or is verified and then they are trolling. This comes from a very unfounded scenario where it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not,” he added.
“It’s a difficult place to be in mentally… This is the herd mentality like something just happens in a flow, like a trend. It’s like a wave and there’s no explanation. So, when you start getting backlash for something, you have no clue about and the devastation it causes along the way, you are left asking, ‘For what?’ You are like what is this bandwagon that people have jumped onto? What happened in the last one and one-and-a-half years was ridiculous.” he said.
Arbaaz said that he realized people were taking these allegations seriously when friends and family members started calling to verify if what was said in the news was indeed true. Last year, he filed a defamation case after posts and videos shared online claimed that he was involved in the deaths of Sushant Singh Rajput and Disha Salian.
Later, 34 leading Bollywood producers, including Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment, Salman Khan Films, and Aamir Khan Productions, and Arbaaz Khan Productions, approached the Delhi High Court, seeking to restrain certain news channels from making or publishing “irresponsible, derogatory and defamatory remarks” and conducting media trials against its members.
The suit filed had said that these channels used highly derogatory words and expressions for Bollywood such as “dirt”, “filth”, “scum” and expressions such as “it is Bollywood where the dirt needs to be cleaned” and “the dirtiest industry in the country”.