How media sensationalism on prostitution angers Deepti Naval

Mumbai, March 29: Veteran

actress Deepti Naval is miffed with

for sensationalising and writing articles based on her conversation with a journalist friend. She has slammed media's attitude towards "sensationalising" issue to grab eye-balls.

Naval vented her anger against media on Facebook and Twitter.

It all started with an incident when residents of her housing society in Mumbai protested thinking that a film shooting was underway, when a television news channel crew came to her house to take Naval's and her colleague Farooq Shaikh's interview.

After the protest, Naval called off the interview. Later on she narrated the incident to one of her journalist friends, who wrote a story under the headline "I'm not running a prostitution racket".

Unfortunately the headline was picked up by other media houses and distorted it, making it look like that the actor is actually running a prostitution racket.

This is what Naval wrote on Facebook.

"Just before the release of Listen Amaya, Farooque Shaikh and I were doing an interview for Rajiv Masand in my Versova terrace flat. I had been keeping unwell those days and had requested Rajiv's camera team to come over to my house instead of me having to go to his studio. Rajiv came over with his three camera setup and we were in the middle of this interview, when three members from the society barged into the flat and demanded that we stop this activity - they thought we were making a movie," Deepti, 56, posted on her Facebook page on Wednesday.

"I explained to them that they can sit here and watch we are not making a movie, we are doing an interview, but they threatened to call the police on me. Rajiv, Farooque, my director Avinash Singh and his wife Geeta were all very embarrassed hearing this sort of conversation. We tried to wind up fast.

"Then one neighbour Rajan Khurana was sent up to convey to me that the society has threatened to call the police if we don't stop this activity right away. I explained again, but to no avail. After that I got a call from the secretary of the society who was very irked and repeated that they will call the police. We cancelled all other interviews after that. I was hugely embarrassed. I apologized to my colleagues and they quietly left," she wrote.

"...Eight days ago, a journalist friend asked me what I was doing sitting in Madh - and I gave vent to my frustration. I told him over the phone that the society treated me so badly and kept threatening me saying they will call the cops as if I'm running a racket here," she posted.

"Next day, it was out in print, in Mumbai Mirror, the sensational headline, 'I'm not running a prostitution racket' and the story about the society fiasco, stating how badly me and Farooque Sheikh were insulted by the members of my building. Except for the scandalous headline, nothing wrong with the contents of the article. Other papers have picked up the same headline and implied that the society has accused me of running a prostitution racket. I'm appalled."

"I was sitting there at my terrace flat yesterday evening (Tuesday) after Farooque and I had spent a whole day going to various radio stations giving fresh round of interviews before the re-release of the old Chashme Buddoor on April 5 - and I was looking around at my beautiful spacious home where I sit and dream, do all my writing work, invite friends, spend quality time with myself - and I was in tears - this sanctuary of mine to be called a prostitution den."

"In my heart. I apologized to my father who is no more in this world," she wrote.

OneIndia News