'Dragging my late wife...': Shashi Tharoor after Vivek Agnihotri, Anupam Kher's tweets

The Thiruvananthapuram MP took to Twitter to share a news report and wrote, "Film promoted by India's ruling party, #KashmirFiles, banned in Singapore."

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Tuesday, without taking names, hit out at filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri and veteran actor Anupam Kher for "dragging" his late wife Sunanda Pushkar into a Twitter spat between the trio over the movie The Kashmir Files which has been banned in Singapore for being “provocative” and “one-sided”.

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor.(PTI file)

Earlier in the day, the Thiruvananthapuram MP took to Twitter to share a news report and wrote, "Film promoted by India's ruling party, #KashmirFiles, banned in Singapore."

Responding to Tharoor's tweet, Agnihotri, who directed the film, shared a list of popular movies which have been banned in Singapore but hailed worldwide, calling Singapore the "most regressive censor in the world."

"Dear fopdoodle, gnashnab @ShashiTharoor, FYI, Singapore is most regressive censor in the world" Agnihotri tweeted tagging Tharoor.

"It even banned The Last Temptations of Jesus Christ (ask your madam). Even a romantic film called #TheLeelaHotelFiles will be banned. Pl stop making fun of Kashmiri Hindu Genocide," Agnihotri added.

In another tweet, the director asked whether Sunanda Pushkar was a Kashmiri Hindu and that the Congress MP should delete his tweet and apologise to Sunanda's soul.

"Hey @ShashiTharoor, Is this true that Late Sunanda Pushkar was a Kashmiri Hindu? Is the enclosed SS true? If yes, then in Hindu tradition, to respect the dead, you must delete your tweet and apologise to her soul," Agnihotri wrote.

Kher also jumped into the spat and shared a screenshot of a Twitter thread of the late Sunanda Pushkar and asking Tharoor to "show some sensitivity towards Kashmiri Pandits for Sunanda's sake."

"Dear @ShashiTharoor! Your callousness towards #KashmiriHindus genocide is tragic. If nothing else at least for #Sunanda's sake who was a Kashmiri herself you should show some sensitivity towards #KashmiriPandits & not feel victorious about a country banning #TheKashmirFiles!," Kher tweeted.

Later, issuing a statement on Twitter, the Congress leader said, "I tweeted a factual news item this morning, with no comment on its contents or on the film 'The Kashmir Files', which I have not seen."

"At no point did I 'mock' or disparage the sufferings of Kashmiri Pandits, of whose plight I am intimately aware, and to which I have repeatedly drawn attention over the years," he added.

"Dragging my late wife Sunanda into this matter was unwarranted and contemptible. No one is more aware of her views than I am. I have accompanied her to the destroyed ruins of her ancestral home in Bomai„ near Sopore„ and joined her in conversations with her Kashmiri neighbours and friends, both Muslim and Hindu. Pile thing I know, unlike those attempting to exploit her when she is not around to speak for herself: She believed in reconciliation, not hate," Tharoor's statement read.

The Kashmir Files, which depicts the exodus of Kashmiri pandits during the 1990s, has received a massive response at the box office, but also landed into a political controversy, with opposition leaders terming it a "propaganda".