Tanushree Dutta photographed in Mumbai.
Highlights
- Tanushree Dutta has denied participating in Bigg Boss 12
- Her name was reportedly on the showrunner's original list
- Bigg Boss 12 went on air two weeks ago
After rumours of Tanushree Dutta participating in the ongoing season of Bigg Boss spread like wildfire on the Internet, the youth wing of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) on Wednesday handed over a letter to the makers of the reality show on their set in Lonavla, threatening violence if the 34-year-old actress is let into the Bigg Boss house, reports news agency ANI. Tanushree Dutta recently resurrected a decade-old harassment claim against actor Nana Patekar and has said that MNS' response to her explosive allegations has been to retaliate with fresh threats. "MNS party in an interview given to a leading daily has threatened me with a violent attack," Ms Dutta told ANI over the weekend.
Maharashtra home minister Deepak Kesarkar told ANI today that Tanushree Dutta has been or was - he was not clear which - given protection but not against Nana Patekar who Mr Kesarkar described as 'an actor and very well-known social worker.' He also said that this was Ms Dutta's "personal fight with somebody, those people have attacked and they have admitted they attacked so protection was given."
Reports of Tanushree participating in Salman Khan-hosted Bigg Boss 12 first did the rounds on social media even before she accused Nana Patekar again. She was reportedly on Team Bigg Boss' list of celebrities along with her actress sister Ishita Dutta. However, their names were not included in the final line-up. Ishita currently stars in Kaun Hai? along with her actor husband Vatsal Sheth.
Tanushree Dutta has also been accused by Rakhi Sawant, who replaced her in the song she was filming when Nana Patekar allegedly harassed her, of using the controversy simply to snag a position on the current season of Bigg Boss - a reality show that thrives on controversy and counts Rakhi Sawant as an alumnus.
MNS, the political party led by Raj Thackeray, is at the centre of Tanushree Dutta's allegations. She says that after she rejected unwanted advances allegedly made by Nana Patekar while filming a song in 2008 for the film Horn OK Pleassss, he used his connections to send MNS goons after her. Ms Dutta's account of having had her vanity van surrounded by thugs and her car attacked has been corroborated by two women who claim to have been eyewitnesses and also by footage that went viral over the weekend.
In an interview to NDTV last week, Tanushree Dutta said about MNS, "It's a pathetic party by itself... It's easy to take an honest individual who is trying to earn a living and overpower them with muscle power and then call yourself powerful and strong."
Several celebrities such as Frieda Pinto, Priyanka Chopra, Twinkle Khanna and Sonam Kapoor among others have openly supported Tanushree on social media while reactions of actors such Shakti Kapoor and Salman Khan have not been deemed appropriate by the Internet.