Telangana’s Forests Minister and Congress leader Konda Surekha has triggered a massive controversy with her allegations against Bharat Rashtra Samithi leader KT Rama Rao – linking him with the divorce of actors Naga Chaitanya and Samantha Ruth Prabhu, drugs and blackmail.
In a post on her Instagram Stories, Samantha slammed the remarks and wrote, “My divorce is a personal matter and I request that you refrain from speculating about it…To clarify: my divorce was mutual consent and amicable, with no political conspiracy involved.”
Samantha further wrote, “To be a woman, to come out and work, to survive in a glamorous industry where women are more often than not treated as props, to fall in love and to fall out of love, to still stand up and fight…It takes a lot of courage and strength.”
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Directing her response toward Minister Surekha, Samantha said, “Konda Surekha Garu, I am proud of what this journey has turned me into—please don’t trivialize it. I hope you realize that your words carry significant weight as a minister.”
Meanwhile, in a statement made on October 2, Chaitanya mentioned that it was painful to come to a decision about his divorce. He added that a mutual decision was taken after a lot of thought. He termed Konda Surekha’s allegations ‘absolutely ridiculous and unacceptable’.
“Women deserve to be supported,” he added in a statement on X.
In a post on X, Naga’s father, Nagarjuna Akkineni “strongly condemned” the remarks by the minister and asked her to withdraw her comments immediately.
In a scathing attack on KT Rama Rao, son of former Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, Surekha said he was the reason why many actresses left the film industry and married early. KT Rama Rao, she claimed, blackmailed film personalities after getting them addicted to drugs.
She also said that she suspected that the BRS leader was behind a series of offensive posts against her.
The Congress leader had faced abuse online after a photo showing BJP leader and Medak MP Raghunandan Rao placing a garland around her neck at a programme. She accused BRS leaders of using the incident to demean her using her gender.
Samantha Ruth Prabhu and Naga Chaitanya got married in 2017, but the couple ended their marriage in 2021. Chaitanya recently got engaged with actress Sobhita Dhulipala and they haven’t announced their wedding date.