Chandigarh: Kulwinder Kaur, the security officer who allegedly slapped new BJP Lok Sabha MP Kangana Ranaut at Chandigarh airport, said she had been triggered by an old remark by the actor about the farmers protest. "She gave a statement... that farmers are sitting there for ₹ 100. Will she go and sit there? My mother was sitting there and protesting when she gave this statement..."
Ms Kaur - who reportedly comes from a family of farmers - has been suspended and faces a police case. She said she had reacted to Kangana Ranaut - who won Himachal Pradesh's Mandi seat and was going to Delhi - of "disrespecting farmers".
After reaching Delhi Ms Ranaut raged about "terrorism rising in Punjab".
"The incident happened at the security check-in. The woman guard waited for me to cross. She then came and hit me... started throwing expletives. I asked (her) why she hit me. She said, 'I support farmers'. I am safe... but my concern is terrorism is rising in Punjab. How do we handle that?" she said in her message.
Mobile footage that quickly went viral showed Ms Ranaut being escorted to a check-in counter and, when she reaches it, a verbal spat breaks out. The video does not show Ms Ranaut being slapped.
Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini said an inquiry is underway. "... action will be taken against the accused. It is sad a person involved in security is involved in this. Whatever happened was wrong..."
Ms Kaur, a Constable in the Central Industrial Security Force, or CISF, was referring to a crude and widely criticised jibe Ms Ranaut posted on X (then Twitter) in 2020 during the height of a nationwide protest by farmers against three farm laws passed, under contentious circumstances, by the centre.
In a social media post Ms Ranaut had tweeted about an elderly woman seen at one of the protests and said she was "available for ₹ 100". She was forced to delete the tweet after public outrage.Ms Ranaut also made headlines in February 2021 after international pop star Rihanna seemed to criticise the BJP government over the farmers' protest and said, "Why aren't we talking about this?"
To this, Ms Ranaut had responded, "No one is talking about it because they are not farmers, they are terrorists who are trying to divide India, so that China can take over our vulnerable broken nation and make it a Chinese colony much like the USA... Sit down you fool, we are not selling our nation like you dummies."
Ms Kangana later deleted that post too.
The farmers' protest that erupted in 2020/21 - and has rumbled on since, potentially costing the BJP key seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha election - made headlines both in the country and abroad.
Ms Ranaut has had several run-ins with the protesting farmers; apart from the 2020 and 2021 tweets, her convoy was blocked by agitators while she was trying to campaign in Chandigarh.
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