Pakistan-born Coronation Street actor Marc Anwar has been sacked from one of Britain's most popular shows for posting racially offensive comments on Twitter against India over the recent attacks and Kashmir issue.
Prominent television channel ITV said the 45-year-old actor not be returning to the show with "immediate effect." Anwar, who joined the world's longest-running TV show in February 2014, played the character of Sharif Nazir.
The channel in a statement said that posting racially offensive tweets was unacceptable. "We are deeply shocked by the entirely unacceptable, racially offensive comments made on Twitter by Marc Anwar. We have talked to Marc and, as a consequence of his comments, he will not be returning to Coronation Street with immediate effect," the statement read.
Anwar tweeted against India after the Uri terrorist attack, which lead to the killing of 18 Indian soldiers. He referred to Indians as "b******s and p*ss-drinking c**ts" on Twitter, according to reports. "Why the f*** do Pakistani artists want to work in f***face India? Do you love money so much?" he further tweeted.
He also asked people to ban Indian movies and said that Pakistanis should leave India. Anwar targeted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Twitter.
Police are now investigating the tweets, which caused widespread shock. Greater Manchester Police on Monday said that they are investigating the matter after they received reports of the hate crime.
Meanwhile, the actor apologised for his "racially offensive" tweets. He told BBC that his tweets were private and did not expect it to be read widely.
"Twitter is not my favourite thing, neither is Facebook. They don't concern me, I have no desire to be famous or to seek publicity," he said, adding, "My Twitter account was private because I didn't want to engage with anybody."
"What's going on in Kashmir is very painful to me, it hurts me deeply," he said, adding that his comments had "upset a lot of people, my family, my friends, my present and past colleagues".
"I cannot apologise enough for those remarks. I can't retract those, in future I can only try and do something that hopefully proves that I am not a bigot, a coward, a liar, a cheat and definitely not a racist."
In a YouTube video, Anwar also apologised to people of both the countries. Watch the video below:
