As Shah Rukh Khan fans waited with bated breath for the release of his film “Jawan”, their excitement was soured by a barrage of reviews that panned the movie. The Twitter accounts @BollywoodKiNews , @NewsOfBolly, and @HarmindarBoxOI in their reviews called the movie “crap”, “unbearable”, and “South Indian masala”. They all gave the film their lowest score: one star.
Some wondered how the movies were reviewed at all, seeing that no mainstream film publication in India or outside had done so. These so-called reviewers had an answer for that as well. They claimed that they had watched the film at the offices of the censor boards of London, Mauritius, and Singapore.
These bad reviews even made it to some news websites, who dubbed them the “first reviews of Jawan”.
India Today investigated this and found that these movie reviews were part of a smear campaign.
They were also absolutely baseless because there had been no press screenings of Jawan anywhere in India or abroad as of September 6, the day before the film’s slated September 7 release.
This was confirmed to India Today by a spokesperson from Red Chillies Entertainment, the company that has produced “Jawan”.
How do we know these reviews are fake and malicious?
First, there are no entities called the “Censor Board of Singapore”, the “Censor Board of Mauritius”, or the “Censor Board of London”.
The film certification bodies in Singapore, Mauritius, and the UK are InfoComm Media Development Authority of Singapore, the Film Certification Board and the British Board of Film Classification, respectively.
India Today reached out to all three bodies. The spokespersons for the British Board of Film Classification and InfoComm Media Development Authority of Singapore categorically denied the presence of any reviewer during the certification screening of the film.
The UK spokesperson said that no film critic named Harmindar attended the screening of “Jawan”, emphasising the body’s strict security measures that allowed only authorised BBFC staff to view content for classification.
“Jawan” was classified as “15” in the UK due to strong violence, injury detail, threat, and suicide. Similarly, Mardhiah Suardi of InfoComm, confirmed that no media personnel watched “Jawan” in the certification screening.
Who is targeting SRK’s ‘Jawan’?
We observed that actor, producer, and YouTuber Kamal R Khan, popularly known as KRK, quote-tweeted all three reviews and amplified them. The archived version of one such quote tweet can be seen here.
Digging deeper, we discovered that two of these accounts were previously addressed as “@kamaalrkhan” by people a few years back in response to tweets.
KRK’s official Twitter handle is @kamaalrkhan at present. It’s also noteworthy that all responses to a 2013 tweet by @NewsOfBolly tagged a now-defunct Twitter account called @KRKBoxOffice indicating that this may have been the account’s old handle.
Both the Twitter accounts @NewsOfBolly and @BollywoodKiNews frequently share tweets and reviews by KRK, who we observed follows only 22 people on Twitter. These two accounts were among them. Additionally, both these accounts follow KRK.
These handles have also posted several abusive tweets targeting film stars and critics. Interestingly, they have also previously claimed to have watched movies at the offices of censor boards in various countries.
So, we can say with some certainty that KRK is behind both accounts. The third account appears to be a case of stolen identity.
The Twitter account @HarmindarBoxOI was created in June this year and has posted only four tweets. It uses the same Akshay Kumar display picture and film collage cover image as another account, “@HarmindarBOi77”.
The latter was created in 2018 and belongs to a film critic from Mumbai.
In conclusion, the reviews of “Jawan” posted by the accounts in question are undoubtedly part of a smear campaign. Fans of SRK who want to read genuine reviews of the film should beware.
On September 7, when the film opens to the public, reviews will be aplenty. But be careful whose opinion you seek — they may not have watched the film at all!
With input from Arjun Deodia