Diljit Dosanjh, Neeti Mohan, Shankar Mahadevan TROLLED For Playing A Sexist Prank

Diljit Dosanjh, Neeti Mohan, and Shankar Mahadevan are facing backlash on Twitter for an insensitive and sexist prank they played on the sets of the show Rising Star 3

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Updated on Mar 25 2019, 21:55:56

Diljit Dosanjh, Neeti Mohan, Shankar Mahadevan TROLLED For Playing A Sexist Prank

Rising star, a singing reality show is running in its third season. It’s a live show that has contestants singing for a jury comprised of Neeti Mohan, Diljit Dosanjh, Shankar Mahadevan. Now the show is making the headlines for all the wrong reasons. The judges of the show are being called out on Twitter for standing up against sexual harassment to play a prank on two contestants.

Gender equality activist, Kirthi Jayakumar, took to Twitter and slammed Neeti, Shankar and Diljit for trivialsing the harassment issue and using as a prank. Her series of tweet immediately garnered a lot of attention. Check out the Twitter thread here:

Absolutely appalled at how @neetimohan18, @diljitdosanjh, @Shankar_Live and the rest of the crew literally threw the #MeToo movement under the bus on @ColorsTV. Speaking up about sexual harassment is not easy, and here you're all belittling it as "mazaak".
— Kirthi (@kirthijayakumar) March 23, 2019

Terrible that @neetimohan18 says that she represents all girls on the stage, and then threatens to walk out in response to what is clearly inappropriate and verbal sexual harassment, and then proceeds to laugh at how it is all a prank. Seriously, sexual harassment is not a joke.
— Kirthi (@kirthijayakumar) March 23, 2019

And now @diljitdosanjh apologized to them!! @Shankar_Live says it was a prank by one contestant on another. Thanks to how casually you all treat an issue so serious, there is ZERO accountability in this industry for sexual harassment.
— Kirthi (@kirthijayakumar) March 23, 2019

I truly hope you all introspect and think about how you've undermined such a grave issue. You've completely disrespected the emotional labour it takes to fight harassment, to speak up and to seek redress. You've reduced it all to a joke @neetimohan18 @Shankar_Live @diljitdosanjh
— Kirthi (@kirthijayakumar) March 23, 2019

Here’s a rundown of what happened on the show. In the episode3, two best friends, Shikhar Rastogi and Kunal Bojewar, entered as a singing duo. After taking the stage, Kunal joked about how Shikhar has a crush on Neeti and how he thought she was looking 'kadak and Raapchik in a laal saree'.

Neeti took offense at this joke and blasted Kunal and Shikhar for it. She reminded them that they are live on national TV and using such cheap words is unacceptable. Diljit and Shankar chimed in too and called out the contestants for their behaviour.

"I am representing all the girls here and I don't allow this. No one can talk to me, or any girl like this in this country or any country. We three judges don't approve this, the show doesn't approve this, the channel doesn't approve this was of talking," said an angry Neeti.

She even threatened to disqualify one of them and stood up to walk off. Seeing Shikhar completely shaken, Neeti began to laugh. Diljit and Shankar, too joined in. Later, Neeti revealed that it was just a prank set up by them to scare Shikhar.

The Twitter thread talked about how problematic this prank was. While so many women have spoken up about sexual harassment, amid the wake of #MeToo movement in India, Rising Star judges thought it is funny to pretend to be offended about harassment.

Image Source:-Instagram/shankarmahadevanfan