Last year in April, Kapil Sharma had gone on an abusive rant against a Mumbai-based journalist and both lodged police complaints against each other after a telephonic spat. Kapil had accused the journalist of defamatory writing and threats of extortion, as well as harassment in connivance with his two former managers — Neeti Simoes and Preeti Simoes. The journalist had also shot back at Kapil with a complaint to the Mumbai Police accusing him of issuing threats, abuse, harassment, and other charges.
It has been a year since Kapil and the journalist had locked horns with each other, the time when the comedian's comeback show Family Time With Kapil Sharma had gone off-air. As Kapil had never spoken about it in the media before, he finally decided to break his silence over the matter when he sat down for a tête-à-tête with Arbaaz Khan on his new show called Pinch.
During one of the segments of the episode, Arbaaz read out some of the comments that followed after Kapil's rant against the journalist. He also read out what filmmaker Hansal Mehta had said after looking at Kapil's abusive tweets which says, "Kapil Sharma's language with the journalist was despicable but also a sad reflection of his possible state of mind. The journalist in question is no ethical saint either. He has harassed many people, spun many malicious stories and has created stories with his misleading questions."
After reading out the comments, Arbaaz said that though we all have seen his version of the story but asked him what triggered him to reply to the particular in such a manner. To which, Kapil replied, "First of all, I would like to say that whatever language that I had used at that time, was totally wrong. I know I agree. I was not in my senses. It was also that time when people had started saying that I was in depression and I had even started drinking excessively. And obviously, when you are not in your senses, you are bound to do wrong things."
He continued, "But at that time, there were so many journalists who were writing negative things about me. So why did I target only one journalist? It's because, the journalist had written almost 160 articles about me over a period of 6 months. My show's format is such that I can't think of arriving late at the shoot location. If you (guests) are coming at 2 pm, I have to be there 4 hours early because I need to manage things and rehearse with my co-artists. So first of all, I would like to set things very clear that the reports about me arriving late on the sets and making my guests wait for hours before the shoot is completely false and baseless."
He further said, "Yes, I agree that some shoots have been cancelled. But why do you have to write articles after articles on that. And I knew who was doing that and why. So I was angered with all these situations which I vented out against the journalist on Twitter. And I feel that if I hadn't vented out my anger, it would have made home inside me which would've troubled me even more than what I had gone through. Then the High Court ordered the journalist that 'forget writing anything negative about Kapil, you won't even write anything positive about him.' Now let me tell you that even after I got married, he didn't write anything about me (and burst into laughter)."
Explaining his stance further, Kapil said, "You know, I feel that we have earned this respect, this love from our audience. Yes, I abuse when I'm angry, and I will continue to do that if someone talks ill about me in future also because I am not saying that I am a saint or somebody. One of his reporter friend had asked me whether I was feeling about guilty about it, I replied to him saying that I was feeling sad that I abused him adding that I was also feeling sad thinking why didn't I beat him. To agar unn dino mil jata to shayad thappad wappad mar deta mai uske. You say that Comedy Nights started off in 2013, I say that I began working for it from 1997. 'Meri woh mehnat hai, mai sab leke aa raha hu aaj, aur ek jhatke me kisike bare me aisa likh rahe ho aur dusri side ki story bhi nahi sunn rahe ho.' So that's the thing I was very angry about and I didn't say anything until it grew bigger after one and a half year. Even I was wrong. I shouldn't have used such language but kya kare hum pale badhe hi hai mahool me to aa jata hai."
Watch the video here:
