Sona Mohapatra, who is known for voicing her opinions fearlessly, recalls the time, when she spoke against Bollywood superstar Salman Khan for his statements on Priyanka Chopra’s decision to quit his movie, Bharat.
Salman had said that Priyanka left the “biggest film of her career” to marry singer-actor Nick Jonas. “Usually people leave their husbands for this,” he had said in 2019. Sona had then tweeted, “@priyankachopra has better things to do in life, real men to hang out with and more importantly, girls to inspire with her journey.”
Following this, she was brutally trolled on social media, the singer said. In a new interview with ETimes, Sona said that she received death threats, and was told she’d get “sh** delivered to her in dabbas”.
“I had gone through the most hideous trolling, including death threats and literally shit being delivered in dabbas (lunch boxes) in my studio, because I had called out Salman Khan for his misogyny and statements. My statements had gone viral,” Sona told ETimes.
Sona further recalled her photographs being morphed onto porn sites and receiving “gang rape threats”.
“It was horrible. And then we realised it was a consolidated digital army that was not necessarily just made up of fans. It further scared away women from being online. It was premeditated. There were a lot of paid bots that were in this whole game. I decided to take it up head on and it was horrible for my family,” she added.
Sona, who is currently gearing up for the release of her documentary, Shut up Sona, which releases July 1 on ZEE5, said that it was exhausting to deal with constant negativity. “You’ll see a lot of those swollen looks in my documentary, Shut Up Sona… But it is still worth going through because it does slowly change the conversations,” Sona said.
