Kiran Rao Takes a Dig at Sandeep Reddy Vanga in Laapataa Ladies? Netizens Believe She Did

The internet believes director Kiran Rao has taken an indirect dig at Sandeep Reddy Vanga in her recent film, Laapataa Ladies. Her new film recently released on Netflix and has been getting praises from the audience. While fans have been sharing their favourite moments from the film, a few social media users pointed out that there is one scene in the film that might be a jibe at Vanga.

In the film, when Phool Kumari (Nitanshi Goel) gets left behind at a station, Manju Maai (Chhaya Kadam) reluctantly takes her in. Manju argues with Phool that her husband might have left her behind at the station on purpose while Phool defends him. In the argument, Manju opens up about her troubled marriage and tells Phool about how her husband would beat her. During the scene, Manju taunts, “A man who loves you has the right to beat you. One day, I exercised my right as well.”

The dialogue has everyone thinking that it was a dig at Vanga, who defended Kabir Singh’s slap scene with the same line in an interview in 2019.

For the unversed, Vanga was addressing the controversial slap scene in Shahid Kapoor and Kiara Advani starrer Kabir Singh in an interview with Film Companion. At the time, the director said, “If you can’t touch your woman, wherever you want, and if you can’t slap, you can’t kiss, you can’t use cuss words. I don’t see the emotion there.”

Coincidentally, Kiran Rao and Sandeep Reddy Vanga got into an exchange of words after the Animal director took a dig at her. In November 2023, Kiran discussed glorification of stalking in Bollywood in an interview when she brought up Kabir Singh. Earlier this year, Sandeep addressed the statement in an interview with Dainik Bhaskar. Sandeep took a dig at Kiran without naming her. “My AD showed me an article. It is of the second ex-wife of a superstar. She is saying that films like Bahubaali 2 and Kabir Singh promote misogyny and stalking. I think she does not know the difference between stalking and approaching. When people read these things out of context, they tend to agree. This is entirely wrong,” Vanga said.

He also brought up Aamir Khan’s Dil to back his point. He pointed out that in the film, Aamir’s character threatened Madhuri Dixit’s character with rape. “If you remember Dil, he almost takes the situation to an attempted rape, and it makes her realise that she was wrong. And she falls in love. What is all this? I don’t know why they attack like that before checking the surroundings,” he said.

Kiran at the time denied commenting about Sandeep’s films, adding that she had not seen Animal. In response to it, the team of Animal pulled out an old video in which Kiran allegedly namedropped the director.