BJP leader Sangeet Singh Som is the latest to join the ranks of those attacking Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan for getting a Bangladeshi cricket player in his Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) team to play in the IPL, saying Khan is a “traitor” who “eats in India” but “sings praises of Pakistan and Bangladesh”.
Som’s gush of vitriol follows similar remarks by spiritual leader Devkinandan Thakur, who also called Khan a “traitor” for including Mustafizur Rahman in the team that SRK co-owns.
“The way Hindus are being persecuted in Bangladesh, women and girls are being raped, their homes are being burned, and anti-India slogans are being chanted there – despite all this, traitors like Shah Rukh Khan – I’m calling him a traitor because everything he has, is given by India, given by the people of India – but where do they invest this money? They invest it in players from a country that is working against India,” Som said on Thursday, and warned that Rahman “won’t be able to step outside the airport” when he lands in India.
“I want to tell people like Shah Rukh Khan, that they will not succeed. At any cost, they will not be able to get Mustafizur Rahman to play here. People like Shah Rukh Khan are traitors; they eat in India and sing praises of Pakistan and Bangladesh,” he added.
Thakur had voiced similar comments that hinted at Khan owing his success to the Hindu community, whose “debt” he was repaying through the alleged “betrayal”.
“This country made you a hero, a superstar, and gave you so much power that you own a cricket team. What were you before? You worked in a TV serial, earning Rs 500-1000 a day,” Thakur had said, adding that he is a Hindu religious leader and therefore pained. “Hindus are being killed in Bangladesh, and you have brought in a Bangladeshi cricketer in your team?”
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Thakur went on to clarify that his comments were not driven by “personal animosity” and that he had neither met Khan in person, nor seen his films.
“I have never met Shah Rukh Khan. I don’t know him. I’ve only seen his posters. I don’t watch films. I don’t do things that corrupt the character of the world,” he said.
Bangladesh has witnessed violence and unrest since the past one year, but things came to a head when people from the Hindu faith started being made victims in the country last month following the death of Bangladeshi student leader, Sharif Osman Hadi. Dipu Chandra Das, a worker in a garment factory in Bangladesh’s Mymensingh district, was beaten to death by a mob over alleged blasphemy charges, his body hanged and set on fire on December 18, 2025.
Days later, another Hindu youth, identified as Amrit Mondal, was lynched at Hosendanga village of Kalimohor union in Rajbari’s Pangsha sub-district over an extortion allegation.
Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the death of Bangladesh’s former prime minister, Khaleda Zia, India’s Minister of External Affairs, S Jaishankar, travelled to Dhaka to attend Zia’s funeral amidst worsening diplomatic relations between the two countries.
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