I’m no Zaira Wasim: Babita Phogat

NEW DELHI: International wrestler-turned-politician Babita Phogat caused social media outrage with a controversial post aimed at members of Tablighi Jamaat. Babita, who contested and lost the Haryana state assembly poll on a BJP ticket last year, had used a derogatory term and hashtag for them. She has over 456k followers on Twitter.
On Friday, several people took to Twitter, asking the microblogging platform to suspend her account.#SuspendBabitaPhogat was one of the top trends with over 147k tweets. A trend, #ISupport-BabitaPhogat, supporting her also emerged on Twitter, which had garnered over 224K tweets by 6.30pm.
The trends comes a day after Kangana Ranaut’s sister Rangoli Chandel’s Twitter account was suspended for violating it’s policies. In a tweet, Babita also expressed solidarity with Chandel. The Commonwealth Games gold winner took to Twitter to defend her earlier post.
“I am Babita Phogat. I will always fight for my country and continue to speak like this. I have not written anything wrong in what I have tweeted. I hold my tweet correct. Because I have only written about those people who have spread coronavirus,” she said in a series of posts.
She also tweeted out a video, where she is seen saying, “I want to say one thing to those people that keep in your mind that I am no Zaira Wasim who will get afraid by your threats and sit back at home. I am not afraid of your threats.” Wasim had recently quit acting, citing religious reasons. Her elder sister and fellow wrestler Geeta Phogat also defended Babita, tweeting that they will continue to speak and be “fearless”.