Indian actress Celina Jaitly has been a victim of ‘verbal violence, humiliation and most headlines’ as she deals with allegations of self-described “journalist and film critic” named Umair Sandhu, who claims to be from Pakistan.

“I have been a victim of verbal violence, humiliation and most headlines, thanks to this person’s content about me in a derogatory manner, no matter how supportive the media outlet is,” she said in an interview with India Today that centred on the allegations of Sandhu and Jaitly’s legal against it.

On X, formerly known as Twitter, Sandhu made some serious allegations against the No Entry actor earlier this year. The derogatory claims went viral on social media, prompting the Indian actor to file a complaint against him.

She filed an official complaint against him with India’s National Commission of Women (NCW) in April. The commission has taken the complaint to the Ministry of External Affairs which has raised the matter with the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi seeking an investigation of the incident.

Jaitly, who made her debut with Janasheen alongside Feroz Khan’s son Fardeen Khan, came to know about the viral content on April 11, 2023.

“When I opened my account, I saw the horrific and viral content about me that he generated for his personal gains. I was tagged by hundreds of people, who brought my attention to Umair Sandhu’s bizarre claims,” she said.

Jaitly admitted that being an actor she had to deal with people’s reactions to her performance, but she could not fathom how someone can make content “just for personal gain”. She described it as “nothing short of online violence”.

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The Golmaal Returns actor went on to add that freedom of speech and verbal violence to assassinate someone’s character were two different things.

“In my case, I was a victim of viral content generated for personal gains,” she said and added that claims were made about her life in Austria and Mumbai.

She started taking action against Sandhu by seeking a ban on his Twitter account, but the auto-generated responses did not support it. She lamented that Twitter still does not do anything despite encouraging “character assassination”.

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“This self-proclaimed film critic is actually based in Pakistan but changes his location to almost every part of the world every few days,” Jaitly said, “the height of stupidity is that some of the most reputable and credible media outlets reports on the lies spread by a Pakistani imposter, only because he uses fancy tags like ‘South Asian film critic’ while posting batches of old holiday photos to convince people of his residence elsewhere.”

The Thank You actor lamented that a legal course was not possible for her since the self-claimed journalist was “hiding in Pakistan”.

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She was “grateful” for the external affairs ministry’s response and support. “We need to understand that all processes have their protocols and even my complaint must go through its due process. I will wait for the process to take its due course.”

Moreover, Rekha Sharma of NCW has assured that she stood with women and victims of “unlawful online content generated for personal gains”

She expressed hope that the Pakistan High Commission would act in accordance with their country’s laws against such crimes.