Famous Bollywood filmmaker Anurag Kashyap is the latest Indian to be named in the newly released tranche of the Epstein files, which has left the internet shocked.
The latest tranche of three million files related to notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein—which was released by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) on January 30—includes mentions of famous faces such as Elon Musk, Indian-American filmmaker Mira Nair, Bollywood actor couple Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan, PM Narendra Modi, and Bill Gates, among hundreds of others.
However, Kashyap—who had allegedly been referred to as the 'Bollywood guy' and the 'Famous Bollywood director' in an email—denied any connection to the sex offender.
The Gangs of Wasseypur director had even been mentioned by name in the series of emails between Jeffrey Epstein and individuals named Giuseppe Bersani, Gino Yu, and Omella Corazza, about an event scheduled for 2017 in Beijing.
“I’ve no clue about this. I get invitations as a speaker, about 15 a month. I rarely respond. Also, I have never been to Beijing in my life!” he told Hindustan Times.
“It’s some random email, that’s self explanatory. The clickbaits in my name are more popular than my films,” he added, dismissing the rumours.
Notably, mentions in the Epstein files alone do not necessarily mean the person is guilty of anything, but they are known to add to the social media flames around the Epstein files issue.
As a result, Mira Nair, who is best known for films like The Namesake, Monsoon Wedding, and A Suitable Boy, received a lot of backlash for her name appearing in the files. The files alleged that she attended an “after party” for a film at the townhouse of convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.
The backlash against Nair has also been amplified by her connection to politics—her son is Zohran Mamdani, the Mayor of New York.
Similarly, the mention of PM Modi in the Epstein files over an official visit to Israel in 2017 led to a lot of backlash from not just netizens, but also opposition parties.
This led the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) to clarify that PM Modi's name had come up only due to the Israel visit, and that the rest was "little more than trashy ruminations by a convicted criminal".