Bebo Begum spoke to the media for the first time about the issue during the Lakme India Fashion Week in Mumbai.
Amid reports that Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan might be stripped of his Padma Shri award, his wife KareenaKapoor today said that the honour was “bestowed” upon him and that Khan would be “okay” to give it back.
An RTI application had revealed in August last year that the government was examining a demand for taking back the Padma Shri conferred on Khan in the wake of a Mumbai court framing charges against him.
It is alleged that Khan had punched on the nose of a South Africa-based businessman and his father-in-law at a Colaba hotel in February 2012.
“The fact is that it is a national honour and they have obviously researched pretty well to have given him this award,” she said. Commenting on the scuffle that happened at the Wasabi restaurant of Taj Hotel in Colaba, she said, “If they want to discuss it, what had happened at Wasabi and how it should affect the Padma Shri, as far as I know, I haven’t discussed it with him yet but I am quite sure he is pretty relaxed and okay to give it back.”
Kapoor was speaking to media on the sidelines of the Lakme India Fashion Week in Mumbai. Khan and his two friends have pleaded not guilty in the
incident after the metropolitan court in Mumbai read out the charges to them in March last year. Demanding that the actor be stripped of the award conferred in 2010, an RTI activist had filed a complaint with the Union Home Ministry on March 14, 2014.
In response to a subsequent RTI application filed to know the status of his complaint, the Home Ministry had replied to him that “the matter was under examination”.
