Anurag Kashyap, Sona Mohapatra slam Salman Khan

Following Salman Khan's shocking 'rape' comment, the media, both traditional and social, is asking why the Hindi film industry has remained largely silent.

Khan made headlines when, in an interview, he compared his exhaustion while shooting for his upcoming film Sultan to that of a raped woman.

“I’d have to lift the same 120-kilo guy 10 times for 10 different angles," he said. "And, likewise, get thrown that many times on the ground. This act is not repeated that many times in real fights in the ring. When I used to walk out of the ring after the shoot, I used to feel like a raped woman. I couldn’t walk straight,” he said.

He hastened to add that he did not mean what he had said in a literal sense. "I don’t think I should have said that," he said. But the damage had been done, with netizens in their thousands attacking Khan's lack of sensitivity and questioning his intelligence. Even the mother of Nirbhaya, the young woman whose gruesome rape and murder in the national capital in December 2012 had shaken and shamed the whole country, slammed Khan for his comment.

Many of the film personalities who reacted to Khan's statement treaded with caution, not wanting to jeopardise their equations with the superstar. But there were two notable exceptions. Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap and playback singer Sona Mohapatra openly criticised Khan for his thoughtless statement.

Speaking to CNN News18, Kashyap said Salman Khan had made a daft statement, one that he would regret. Kashyap was confident that the superstar had already realised his mistake and would apologise soon.

Kashyap and Khan have never been the best of friends. Time and again, Kashyap has made a dig at the "Rs100 crore club" for spoiling audiences. It does not take a Sherlock to figure out whom the barbs were aimed at.

The Kashyap-Khan war also stems from the fact that Salman Khan and his actor-producer brother Arbaaz Khan threw Anurag Kashyap’s brother Abhinav out from Dabangg 2. Abhinav Kashyap had directed the hugely successful Dabangg (2009), but his attitude allegedly cost him the sequel, which was then directed by Arbaaz Khan himself.

Meanwhile, Mohapatra was scathing in her criticism of Khan.

The singer was then trolled by unruly fans of the superstar. The tough woman, however, stuck to her guns and asked Khan to discipline his fans.

Salman Khan's father Salim Khan, the well-known film scriptwriter, has already apologised on his son’s behalf, but the anger against the superstar is unlikely to be calmed until the man himself makes a sincere public apology.