Hours after she was nominated as the Congress candidate for Mumbai North Lok Sabha seat, Bollywood actress Urmila Matondkar was targeted by trolls.
On her Wikipedia profile page, miscreants changed her name, religion and other details, sparking furore among her family and supporters.
Matondkar was rechristened ‘Mariyam Akhtar Mir’, who was married to a Kashmiri businessman and model Mohsin Akhtar Mir in 2015.
“After her ‘nikaah’ [Muslim marriage ceremony], she has changed her name legally to Mariyam Akhtar Mir,” the article also read.
It went even further citing her parents as Shivinder Singh and Rukshana Sultana, implying she was the second generation in the family to have an inter-religious Hindu-Muslim wedding.
“This is sheer nonsense perpetrated by some mischievous anti-social elements. Wikipedia should take action against them,” said her father Shrikant Matondkar. “For Urmila, this is purely an ideological fight for upholding democratic ideals and her strong convictions. She would never stoop so low as to discuss the family or relatives of her opponents on such platforms.”
Maharashtra Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant said that “this effectively proves that the Bharatiya Janata Party considers her a ‘serious contender’ and not a lightweight as some of their leaders have been claiming”.
“The moment the Congress declared her candidature, the BJP got so terrified of imminent defeat that their Dirty Tricks Department has started raising her marriage in social media. Should we remind dirty minds of BJP about the marriage of Dharmendra ji [with] Hema ji?” Sawant tweeted on Friday, referring to actor Dharmendra’s alleged conversion to Islam to marry second wife Hema Malini.
Unfazed by the trolls, Matondkar is busy campaigning in the constituency that sprawls through the thickly populated suburbs of Malad-Kandivali-Borivali-Dahisar, in north-west part of Mumbai.
“In just two days, we have witnessed record crowds turning up to meet and greet her. Our candidate is getting similar or even better response than Govinda. We are besieged with requests from all localities where people clamour for a ‘darshan’ of Urmila even before she files her nomination papers,” said Mumbai North District Congress President Ashok Sutrale.
Following intervention of some people, the original Wikipedia page was restored with the necessary corrections.