MNS workers protest at Karan Johar’s office

Cops detain 15 party men objecting to casting of Pakistani artistes in upcoming movie.

The Amboli police on Tuesday detained 15 MNS workers after they staged a protest at Bollywood producer-director Karan Johar’s Andheri (west) office for casting Pakistani actor Fawad Khan in his upcoming film, Ae Dil Hai Mushkil. The workers were released after a few hours.

The group entered the premises of Mr Johar’s Andheri office at around 12 pm on Tuesday with a view to staging a protest. However, a team of Amboli police, deployed at the spot to deal with the impending protest, detained the agitating party workers thereby preventing them from entering Mr Johar’s office. Those detained were subsequently released by the police, said an official. “They were detained only to avoid that particular incident,” he said. Following the incident, Amboli police has deployed policemen outside Mr Johar’s office to deal with any untoward incident.

Last week, in the wake of the Uri terror attack where 18 soldiers of the Indian Army were killed, the MNS had given an ultimatum to Pakistani artistes to leave the country within 48 hours. Whereas, Mr Johar, in an interview, had said that banning Pakistani artistes could not be a solution to the problem. Following Mr Johar’s statement, MNS activists submitted a memorandum to his office. In the letter, MNS said that if Mr Johar wanted to make the film with Pakistani artistes, the MNS would ensure that the film did not get screened in city theatres. The regional political party also threatened that it would scuttle the film’s release.

Earlier, when MNS issued an ultimatum to Pakistani artistes, joint commissioner of police Deven Bharti said that if a person had proper documents, they did not have any cause for worry.

Ae Dil Hai Mushkil stars Ranbir Kapoor, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Anushka Sharma along with Khan and is scheduled for a Diwali release.