Actor Prakash Raj sends legal notice to BJP MP for ‘Trolling’
Simha on October 2 had flayed the actor in a tweet for questioning Prime Minister Narendra Modi's silence over those "celebrating" the killing of activist-journalist Gauri Lankesh.
Deepa Balakrishnan | CNN-News18
November 23, 2017, 6:59 PM IST
Bengaluru: Actor Prakash Raj on Thursday said he has sent a legal notice to BJP MP Pratap Simha seeking an apology for "trolling" him on social media.
Holding a rare press conference to make this announcement, Raj said this is his campaign against ‘troll-vandalism’ – where he denounced Simha for making personal attacks. Raj said, “When I questioned my Prime Minister about his silence in the wake of Gauri (Lankesh’s) killing, he (Simha) questioned my personal life. He made fun of my pain, in the wake of my son’s death. People voted to power are shamelessly trolling.”
Raj (known variously as Prakash Rai in Karnataka, his birth-place) was angry that an MP of a ruling party could make ‘below-the-belt’ comments as Simha had done in October. Simha, an MP from Mysore-Kodagu, had allegedly asked Raj, “You are a person who was running behind a dancer even when your son had died, what moral right do you have to question Modi.
”Raj said Simha was trivialising his grief over his son’s death, and probably had no idea of how deeply pained all his family members continue to be.
Calling him a ‘serial offender,’ Raj brought up the issue of how Simha had made derogatory remarks on the wife of dead MLA Mahadev Prasad when she sought to contest a by-election.
“He had actually said she was greedy for power when she should be grieving for her husband. Even his party men had told him not to say such things, and I hope they will tell him now too. My campaign is not against him because he is of any party, my campaign is against him for trolling like this when he should be a responsible Member of Parliament. I want to tell the world – you can’t get away with hurting people like this. Someone has to bell the cat and I am doing it… speaking up for so many others who are remaining silent in the face of such troll vandalism. He may be powerful but I will take him on.”
Saying that the silence of the powers-that-be on such personal attacks was further encouraging trolls, Raj said he was not a politician but his ideology was “not saffron” and he felt there was a silent majority that is “waiting to correct its mistake in the 2019 elections.”