The CISF constable who allegedly slapped Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut was identified as Kulwinder Kaur, the sister of a farmer leader whose organisation was part of the protests against the three now-repealed farm laws. The BJP’s MP-elect, who won the Lok Sabha polls by defeating Himachal Pradesh minister and Congress leader Vikramaditya Singh from Mandi, was at the Chandigarh airport when the incident took place.
Kulwinder is the sister of Sher Singh Mahiwal, who is the organisational secretary of the Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee. The 35-year-old now-suspended constable joined the CISF in 2009 and has been with the aviation security group of the force at the Chandigarh airport since 2021. She is from Punjab’s Sultanpur Lodhi and is the mother of two children.
According to officials, she has had no vigilance inquiry or punishment against her in the force to date. Her husband is also posted at the same airport. She appeared to be upset with Ranaut over her stance on the farmers’ protests, officials said.
A video doing the rounds of social media showed an agitated Kulwinder talking to people presumably after the incident. “Kangana made a statement that farmers were protesting in Delhi because they were paid Rs 100 or Rs 200. At the time, my mother was one of the protesters,” she said in the purported video.
The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), tasked with providing security at airports, has also ordered a court of inquiry into the incident and lodged an FIR against Kulwinder. Terming the incident a serious matter, National Commission for Women chairperson Rekha Sharma called for serious action and said the panel had taken up the matter with the CISF. Those responsible for security at airport are themselves breaching security, she said in a post on X.
Leader of the opposition and former Himachal Pradesh chief minister Jai Ram Thakur termed incident very unfortunate and condemned it. “Such behaviour with an elected representative by security personnel at the airport is very unfortunate and calls for action,” he told PTI.
State public works minister Vikramaditya Singh, who lost to Ranaut in the elections, said, “The incident is unfortunate and we condemn it.” He said action should be taken against the constable.
In a video statement titled “Shocking rise in terror and violence in Punjab” posted on X after she landed in Delhi, the “Queen” actor said she was safe and fine.
Recapping in detail what had happened, Ranaut said she had been getting a lot of calls from the media and her well-wishers.
The constable, she said, came towards her from the side. “She hit me in the face and started abusing me. I asked her why she did it and she said she supports the farmer protests. I am safe but my concern is that terrorism is increasing in Punjab… How do we handle that?”
The four-time National Award winner has been a high-profile, prominent voice supporting the ruling party on issues like the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in 2019-20 and farmer protests in 2020-21. During the agitation against the three farm laws, Ranaut allegedly misidentified a woman farmer from Punjab and called her Bilkis Bano, an octogenarian who had made international headlines during the anti-CAA protests earlier in the Delhi neighbourhood of Shaheen Bagh.
She had then shared a tweet alleging that the ‘Shaheen Bagh dadi’ also joined the farmers’ agitation over the new agriculture laws at various border points of the national capital. She retweeted the post with pictures of two elderly women and wrote that the “same Dadi” who featured in Time Magazine was “available in 100 rupees”.
The actor later deleted the tweet after Twitter users pointed out that both the women were different.
(With PTI inputs)
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