Fact-Check: Did Amul take a dig at Urmila Matondkar post Kangana Ranaut's 'soft porn star' comment

Amidst the ongoing war of words between Urmila Matondkar and Kangana Ranaut, that has now turned into a major controversy, an advertisement by Amul featuring the Rangeela actress has surfaced online and is doing the rounds on social media.

The ad carries a cartoon of Urmila in a red dress with a plunging neckline as the caption reads, "Not MASOOM anymore?"

The claim

Now, as Amul has a knack of coming up with creatives related to trending topics, netizens assumed that the ad featuring Urmila is a recent one and started to call out the company for being "misogynistic".

Believing that Amul actually came up with the ad after Kangana called Urmila a "soft porn star", scores of Twitter users took offence and slammed the dairy brand for targeting the veteran Bollywood actress.

Fact-Check

The ad which is being paddled as Amul's recent take on the fresh controversy is actually from 1995 when Urmila's Rangeela had just come out. The creative was meant to acknowledge Urmila's tremendous onscreen journey from a child artist in 1983 release Masoom to a stunning performer in Rangeela.

A reverse image search revealed that Ram Gopal Varma, the director of Rangeela, had shared the ad last week on completion of 25 years of the iconic film. "Amul hoarding after RANGEELA released," had captioned the post.

Furthermore, Anurag Kashyap came forward and clarified the misunderstanding pertaining to the ad. "If I am not mistaken, this came out when "Rangeela" released and not now. And it was based on the fact that Urmila was the child actor in "Masoom". It was meant to be an appreciation. Now misused by trolls after the current scenario," he wrote.

Simultaneously, scores of other Twitter users including Tehseen Poonawalla took down their earlier posts and put out a new tweet stating that the ad was taken out of context and that it has nothing to do with the latest Urmila-Kangana row.

The controversy between the two stars erupted when Urmila, during an interview with a Marathi news channel, mocked Kangana for levelling drugs-related allegations against the entire Hindi film industry. Kangana, who is not the one to let go, retaliated by calling Urmila a soft porn star on national television.