Published 11:15 IST, July 13th 2020
Who is Agrima Joshua? Comedian apologises after Shivaji statue joke; makes goon repent too
Mumbai-based stand-up comedian Agrima Joshua has been accused of hurting sentiments of followers of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in her comedy act in 2019.
Agrima Joshua is a Mumbai-based stand-up comedian who has been the target of social media ire over the past few days due to her old comedy video where she had joked about the comments on Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj that she had read online. A clip from a stand-up gig hosted by Joshua in 2019 surfaced online last week and has since gained tremendous notoriety as people have been accusing her of disrespecting Maratha ruler Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.
Who is Agrima Joshua and what was the joke?
Joshua in her performance spoke about Chhatrapati Shivaji's upcoming statue in the Arabian Sea in Maharashtra and some funny things about it she read on the Q&A website Quora. She said that a user on Quora had written that the Chhattrapati Shivaji Maharaj statue will have GPS tracker and will shoot laser rays out of its eyes to kill Pakistani terrorists in the Arabian Sea. She also went onto claim that she dislikes doing political jokes in her sets.
Agrima Joshua accused of hurting Maratha sentiments
However, the allegedly disrespectful jokes did not go down well with followers of the Maratha ruler as they started calling her out for hurting their sentiments. Many of them even tagged law authorities in the state of Maharashtra, including State Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, Mumbai Police, CM Uddhav Thackeray and many others, urging them to take strict action against Joshua. On Friday, she apologized for her actions and even took her video down from the social media after the Home Minister instructed Mumbai police and Cyber cell to take action against her.
Angry social media users also shared details of the cafe where Joshua had performed, while members of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) allegedly barged into the café on Saturday and vandalized property. The authorities at the cafe also released a statement after the incident.
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Even though the matter was settled between Joshua and her complainants, a social media user from Gujarat, Shubham Mishra, created controversy by posting a video in response to the comedian's actions. In the video that is now deleted from his Instagram profile, Mishra had publicly threatened to rape Joshua and the women in her family. After an outrage on social media against Mishra and the intervention of NCW, the 26-year-old foul-mouthed goon from Gujarat has been booked by Vadodra City Police as on Sunday evening for obscenity, criminal intimidation, insult against women and other such charges.
Updated 11:15 IST, July 13th 2020