Salim Khan on Abhinav Kashyap accusing Salman Khan’s family of sabotaging his career: ‘Watch his films first then we’ll talk’

Filmmaker Salim Khan has reacted to director Abhinav Kashyap’s accusations against the family of sabotaging his career. Abhinav, who directed the first Dabangg film with Salman Khan in the lead, recently said that the actor, and his brothers Arbaaz and Sohail had bullied him and tried to impact the release of his films.

Speaking with The Times of India, Salim seemed miffed with his name coming up in Abhinav’s statement. “Ji haan, hum hi ne sab kharab kiya hai na. Aap pehle jaake unki filmein dekhiye phir hum baat karte hain. Unhone mera naam daala hai na unki statement mein? Unhe shayad mere pitaji ka naam nahi pata. Unka naam tha Rashid Khan. Unhe humare dadaon aur pardadaon ka naam bhi daalne dijiye (Yes, we are the ones to ruin everything, right? You watch his films first and then we’ll talk. He used my name in his statement right? Maybe he didn’t know my father’s name. His name was Rashid Khan. Let him use my grandfather and great grandfather’s names too). Let him do what he wants, but we will not waste time in reacting to what he says,” Salim said.

Earlier, Arbaaz had told Hindustan Times that he has taken legal action against Abhinav. “In fact, we have already taken legal action even before this post; it was after his earlier post (when Kashyap spoke about having differences with Arbaaz and Salman and led him to step down from the Dabangg franchise). We have had no communication with Abhinav since we started working on Dabangg 2. We parted ways professionally. Don’t know where all this coming from. We are taking legal action,” he said.

Abhinav had appealed to the government to launch a detailed investigation into the demise of actor Sushant Singh Rajput and shared a Facebook post about his own experience of bullying. “My experience is no different. I have experienced exploitation and bullying first hand,” he had written.

“Arbaaz Khan on Dabangg and ever since. So here is my story 10 years after Dabangg. The reason I moved out of making Dabangg 2 ten years ago is that Arbaaz Khan in collusion with Sohail Khan and family was trying to take control of my career by bullying me. because Arbaaz Khan sabotaged my second project with Shree Ashtavinayak Films that I was signed up with by personally calling their head Mr. Raj Mehta and threatening him with dire consequences if they made a film with me. I had to return the signing money to Shree Ashtavinayak films and moved to Viacom Pictures. They did the same thing. Only this time the sabotager was Sohail Khan and he intimidated the then Viacom CEO Vikram Malhotra. My project was sabotaged and I was made to return my signing fee of Rupees 7 Crores plus interest of Ninety odd lacs. Its only then that Reliance Entertainment came to my rescue and we forged an enduring partnership for my film Besharam,” he added.

The director added, “But to behold… Mr Salman Khan and family sabotaged the release of the film and got their PROs to run a sustained negative smear campaign against me and my film Besharam before release. This scared the distributors from buying my film. Reliance Entertainment and I were capable and courageous enough to release the film ourselves but the battle had just begun. My enemies, which there were many ran a sustained negative Trolling and badmouthing campaign against the film till the Box Office of my film collapsed. But to their horror, Besharam had still netted 58 crores before it went out of theatres.”

The ‘Dabangg’ director wrote, “The suicide of Sushant Singh Rajput brings to the forefront a much bigger problem of what many of us have been dealing with. Exactly what might compel a person to commit suicide?? I fear his death is just the tip of the iceberg just like the #metoo movement was for a much bigger malaise in Bollywood.”