Irked by 'outpour of love' for Sushant, Saif calls out Bollywood's 'ultimate hypocrisy'

He said it was 'embarrassing' how people were trying to gain mileage from 'this poor fellow's tragedy.'

In an interview with The Times of India, Saif said the news was awful and suggested that instead of 'outpouring so much of love', a day of silence would have been more respectful.

"There are so many people who've made comments so quickly. And it just seems to me that people are somewhere gaining some mileage from this poor fellow's tragedy, you know, whether it's to show compassion or to show interest or to show some political stance. So many people are talking rubbish in this nonstop kind of barrage on social media and it's just embarrassing, really, I think," said Saif whose daughter Sara debuted opposite Sushant in the film Kedarnath.

"Out of respect for him, for Sushant's tragedy, maybe a day of silence or introspection would be a little more becoming than this outpouring of love – an outpouring of love from people who obviously didn't care about him and people who famously don't care about anybody else," he said.

He said that this is an industry which cares about nobody and this sudden concern is "ultimate hypocrisy and insult to the dead."

"I mean, we don't care about anybody. You know, it's a very cutthroat line of work. But to pretend that you do care is like the ultimate hypocrisy and I think that's an insult to the dead, you know, it's an insult to the soul that's gone," the 'Nawab' of Bollywood stated.

Even being a part of the industry Saif said the sudden display of love for Sushant is ‘a little much to digest’ for him.

"This is the thing. We live in an age where people write 10 lines for you on Twitter and will walk past you on the street - won't even touch you or shake your hand. You know, you get wished for your birthday, but people don't actually call you. There's no contact," he said.

On being asked to comment about the fact that some people think Sushant was led down by heavyweights, Saif commented: "I don't really agree with that also. People are failing people constantly. Everyone talking about him, even those saying who failed you or didn't fail you is, I think, somewhat exploiting his name."

"These are the wrong comments to make now. I mean, you can say, listen, it's just really bad, what happened. It's really sad that this is the only way he could see out. But to blame anybody or to you know, draw these camps out, this is pathetic. I think it's a function of lockdown plus social media," he said.

Speaking about his personal ties with Sushant, the actor said: "When I did my guest appearance in his 'Dil Bechara', I think he was quite happy with that. He was very nice to me and he said he wanted to come and have a drink and talk about various things, which never happened, which I feel bad about. Maybe I could have, you know, helped in some way or not… I don't know. But after working with him, I quite liked him because he was nice."

The suicide of Sushant has opened up a floodgate of emotions where people are taking it on social media especially Twitter to blame the favouritism and nepotism of Bollywood responsible for the actor's death.

While on one hand, celebrities have been expressing shock and remembering the promising talent that Suhsant was, some have lashed out at Bollywood's powerful people including filmmaker Karan Johar, actress Alia Bhatt and lastly superstar Salman Khan and his family over nepotism issue.

Karan and Alia faced the ire of netizens for allegedly encouraging nepotism in the film industry and Salman was slammed for ruining careers of many including actor Vivek Oberoi.

Joining the social media users, actress Kangana Ranaut, who is known for taking on the Bollywood's "influentials", said she had failed to understand how some are saying that people with weak mind commit suicide by getting depressed.

She had even gone to the extent of calling such acts as intentional and raised a question if death Sushant can be termed 'suicide or a planned murder.'

The latest to join the bandwagon was filmmaker Abhinav Singh Kashyap, who slammed Salman Khan and his family for allegedly sabotaging his own films besides ruining him mentally.

Treading on a different path, filmmaker Shekhar Kapur, however, felt it was important to bring down the system instead of calling out a few names.