Even as outrage over Leena Manimekalai's "Kaali" movie poster depicting the goddess smoking a cigarette grows, the Toronto-based filmmaker has raked up another controversy by posting a fresh tweet. On Thursday, Manimekalai took to her Twitter handle and tweeted a photo that shows two people smoking while dressed in the costumes of Lord Shiva and a Hindu goddess.
The filmmaker has captioned the photo "Elsewhere". The shared post is very similar to her controversial kaali movie poster.
After the release of the poster of her documentary film, Manimekalai has been facing immense backlash on social media. Outrage over the poster, showing Goddess Kaali smoking and holding an LGBTQ pride flag soon spread with political parties condemning the filmmaker for releasing such a poster and hurting religious sentiments.
Several right-wing groups also took offence and multiple complaints were lodged against her in places like Lucknow, Delhi and Assam.
After the controversy snowballed, Canada’s Aga Khan Museum removed the presentation of the documentary. The microblogging site Twitter has also removed the controversial July 2 tweet of filmmaker Leena Manimekalai.
However, it's not clear when Twitter actually pulled down the tweet. The original tweet by the filmmaker has been replaced by a message from Twitter that reads, "This Tweet from @LeenaManimekali has been withheld in India in response to a legal demand," reported news agency ANI.
Soon after Twitter took down the post, Leena in a tweet asked whether the microblogging site would also withhold posts by "hate mongers".
"This is hilarous. Will @TwitterIndia withhold the tweets of the 200000 hate mongers?! These lowlife trolls tweeted and spread the very same poster that they find objectionable. Kaali cannot be lynched. Kaali cannot be raped. Kaali cannot be destroyed. She is the goddess of death," wrote Manimekalai, as reported by ANI.