Delhi witnessed roughly 50,000 protesters take to the streets for the ‘Chalo Sansad’ march, walking from Jantar Mantar toward Parliament. As footage from the capital began circulating online, Huma Qureshi responded to reports of an alleged police lathi-charge on students and demonstrators. Taking to Instagram, the actress posted a lengthy note revealing that the incident had left her with “a deep sense of sadness.”
Huma Qureshi’s Instagram note
Taking to her Instagram, Huma wrote, “The visuals from today will stay with me for a very long time. Seeing peaceful protestors being met with such brute force and lathis left me with a deep sense of sadness. This surely could have been handled with much more patience, more listening and more dialogue.”She added, “We, the people of India, elected this government and today we all need to ask questions and expect accountability. We are a huge, diverse nation. We don’t all have to agree on every issue, but surely we can agree that every citizen deserves to be heard with dignity before force becomes the response.”“Respect to every student and every citizen who chose to stand peacefully for what they believe in. Jai Hind,” she concluded.
Hema Malini, Kangana Ranaut slam the protest
Hema Malini and Kangana Ranaut, present on the opening day of the Monsoon Session, spoke to reporters and voiced their disapproval of the protest. Hema said, “If there is a problem, it should be discussed properly. Protesting in this manner won’t achieve anything. As for the country’s youth and the education system, our Modi government has always stood by them and done a great deal of work. Given that, the protests you are staging now make no sense at all.“Kangana stated, “If you feel so strongly, you should stand for election yourself. You cannot arm-twist the government into deciding who to sack and who to retain; this kind of arm-twisting is not acceptable. Gradually, everyone will seek refuge in the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Sanatan culture because this is our own culture, whereas everything else has been borrowed from the rest of the world.”
Celebrities extend their support
The Jantar Mantar protest saw celebrities such as Prakash Raj, veteran actor Shabana Azmi, and Naseeruddin Shah among those present. Earlier, several other stars including Soni Razdan, Zeenat Aman, Abhay Deol, Sonakshi Sinha, Omi Vaidya, Imran Khan, Naseeruddin Shah, and Ratna Pathak Shah, had taken to social media to show their support for Sonam Wangchuk and the protesters observing a hunger strike.
