Shakib Al Hasan apologizes for hurting the feelings of fans about his recent tour of India

CNI Desk: Bangladesh all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan apologised for hurting the sentiments of his fans as he made the headlines for all the wrong reasons through his recent activities.

Shakib had been involved in a series of incidents that led to huge criticism in the recent past following his short visit to India.

Shakib travelled to India by road availing the 'air bubble' arrangement between the two countries but it ended up landing him in hot water.

Firstly, he made the headlines as a fan alleged that Shakib threw his phone after he wanted to take a selfie with him at the Benapole border.

“I do not understand how I will benefit from breaking someone’s phone. I think you (the supporters) will be able to answer this better than me. I never broke the phone intentionally. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I was trying to follow social distancing norms (while crossing the immigration),” Shakib said in a video uploaded in his official YouTube channel on Monday.

“The area was packed full of people and everyone was trying to take a photo with me. But I tried to complete the formalities by maintaining a safe distance. A person there insisted to come close to me for a photo and when I tried to push him away, his phone dropped to the floor. I am extremely sorry for that but I think he should have also been a bit careful,” he added.

If breaking the phone was not bad enough, Shakib found himself in further trouble after it was revealed that the ace all-rounder had made the visit to Kolkata’s Kakurgachi to attend the inaugural ceremony of a Kali Puja Mandap.

The incident was not taken well by his Muslim fans which prompted them to start a movement against him on the social media and it is understood that he lost a lot of followers from his different social media platform.

Things took a turn for worse when a certain youth named Mohsin Talukdar from Shahpur in Sylhet threatened to kill Shakib through a live video on Facebook on Monday for hurting sentiments of the Muslims.

 

“The second issue I want to speak about is quite sensitive. I want to start by saying that I am a proud Muslim and try to follow my religion properly. There will be mistakes and that is part of life. I apologise if I have made a mistake and apologise if I have hurt your sentiment,” said Shakib.

“I have not travelled to Kolkata for inaugurating the Puja Mandap but for a felicitation program on behalf of the authority of that area. At the end of the program when I was about to get into the car Parash Da asked me if I can light a candle in the Puja Mandap and I did that and stayed there for couple of minutes and some pictures were taken,” he said.

“I am playing for Kolkata for long time and so naturally some of them are very close to me. Actually someone else had inaugurated the Puja Mandap before me,” he said.

“I hope you (fans) will forgive me as I am extremely sorry for hurting your sentiments. As a Muslim if you feel that I was wrong to go there, then I will not do it again and make sure these kind of acts are not repeated by me,” he said claiming the media reports of him inaugurating the Puja Mandop to be untrue.