Urmila Matondkar faces hate for having a Muslim ‘terrorist’ husband

KARACHI: Bollywood actor Urmila Matondkar and her husband, Kashmiri entrepreneur Mohsin Akhtar Mir got married on March 3, 2016, and have since enjoyed a blissful married life. However, she recently spoke about how she has been trolled and mocked heavily because Mir is a Muslim. The trolling went too far, so that her Wikipedia page was edited to show Matondkar’s religion to be Islam. The actress is now retaliating to the hate she and her husband faced over the years.

In a conversation with Mojo Story, the 46-year-old actress expressed her disappointment with the attacks on her husband and his family. She said, “He was called a terrorist, a Pakistani. I mean, there is a limit to where it should go…”

“They (trolls) have even infiltrated my Wikipedia page and they have gone and put my mother’s name as Rukhsana Ahmed and my father’s name as Shivinder Singh, two human beings who must be living somewhere in India but I don’t know of. My father’s name is Shrikant Matondkar and my mother’s name is Sunita Matondkar,” she revealed while speaking to Mid-Day. Urmilla Matondkar mentioned that her husband is not just a Muslim, but also a Kashmiri Muslim. “We both follow our religions in an equally staunch way. That gave them a bigger platform to troll me and constantly target him and his family. It was very unfortunate,” she lamented.

Read: What have we done to the white on our flag?

It is a general expectation from public figures to be thick-skinned. However, the actress stated that she is a sensitive person. “I don’t have a thick skin but I think sensitivity is one of the strongest points of a woman. Being able to have that compassion, that empathy and that sensitivity are what makes me a woman,” she said. On another occasion, the actress said, “Woman’s sensitivity, compassion, empathy are her biggest strengths… don’t ever let go of that in attempts of getting bigger things in life.”

Matondkar had contested the 2019 Lok Sabha election from the North Mumbai constituency as a Congress candidate and has recently joined the Shiv Sena.

Urmila Matondkar also had her Instagram account hacked amidst all the ruckus of trolling and hating she and her husband faced. An FIR was registered in the Cyber Cell of Mumbai Police on Monday.  The account although recovered, still has some of her posts missing according to Bollywood Hungama. In a written complaint, the Judaai actress wrote that 16 of her posts have been deleted. “I had received a direct message on my account and when I clicked it to open, it took me to the website and asked me to follow certain steps and pursuant to that they ask for verifying the account and then the account got hacked and all my Instagram posts were deleted,” her complaint reads.

After the recovery of her account, she took to Twitter to thank the police, and also urged women to not take cyber crimes lightly. “Cybercrimes’ is not something that women should take lightly… As I went to file FIR on my @instagram ac hacking met this dynamic DCP #cybercrime @MumbaiPolice Smt. Rashmi Karandikar enlightened me a lot more on the issue. Will surely be working on it in the future. @MahaCyber1,” she wrote.