Irfan Pathan slams Kangana Ranaut, blames actor for 'spreading hate'

Former Indian cricketer Irfan Pathan on Thursday slammed Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut, accusing the National Award-winning actress of "spreading hate" to counter his humanitarian posts. Irfan took to social media, where he shared a post with a jibe directed at Kangana, whose Twitter handle got suspended last week over alleged violation of the platform's policy of ‘Hateful Conduct and Abusive Behaviour'. This comes after Kangana shared a BJP MLA's tweet on her Instagram story, where the legislator had questioned the Gujarat cricketer for sympathising with Palestinians but remaining silent on the post-poll violence in West Bengal. 

Pathan said all his posts concern either "humanity" or his "countrymen" before accusing Kangana and other "paid accounts" of spreading hate on social media platforms. "All my tweets are either for humanity or countrymen, from a point of view of a guy who has represented India at the highest level. On the contrary, counters I get from people like Kangana, whose account gets dismissed by spreading hate, and some other paid accounts are only about hate. #planned," Pathan wrote in his Instagram post, which he initially published on Twitter.

While sharing his tweet on Instagram, the former Indian pacer asked "if so much planning can go into destructing someone, why not some constructive planning which can help our country and countrymen?" Pathan had earlier posted a tweet condemning the ongoing violence in Israel, where Palestinians and Israeli security forces have been clashing for weeks. The violence escalated last Friday, prompting rival Hamas to interfere militarily by launching rockets into Israeli townships. 

Kangana's Twitter handle gets suspended

On May 4, Twitter suspended Kangana Ranaut's account permanently for violating its rules around hate speech. The 34-year-old actor was accused by the micro-blogging platform of sharing tweets that could potentially lead to "offline harm". Kangana also issued a statement on the suspension, where she accused Twitter of restricting her freedom of speech and expression, saying "by birth a white person feels entitled to enslave a brown person, they want to tell you what to think, speak or do". 

(Image Credit: PTI)