After last month’s sting on DHFL promoters, Cobrapost is back with yet another successful operation, this time exposing the ‘Bikao celebrities,’ who are willing to promote political parties in exchange of handsome money.
During a sting operation – “Operation Karaoke”—a 60-minute documentary film was made by Cobrapost under which as many as 36 Bollywood celebrities were exposed allegedly claiming that they are willing to accept large sums of cash in exchange for posting favourable messages on behalf of various political parties—and make it seem like this is their personal opinion.
The 36 celebrities “stung” by Cobrapost are: playback singers Abhijeet Bhattacharya, Kailash Kher, Mika Singh and Baba Sehgal; actors Jackie Shroff, Shakti Kapoor, Vivek Oberoi, Sonu Sood, Ameesha Patel, Mahima Chaudhry, Shreyas Talpade, Puneet Issar, Surendra Pal, Pankaj Dheer and his son Nikitin Dheer, Tisca Chopra, Deepshikha Nagpal, Akhilendra Mishra, Rohit Roy, Rahul Bhat, Salim Zaidi, Rakhi Sawant, Aman Verma, Hiten Tejwani and his wife Gauri Pradhan, Evelyn Sharma, Minissha Lamba, Koena Mitra, Poonam Pandey, Sunny Leone; comedians Raju Srivastava, Sunil Pal, Rajpal Yadav, Upasana Singh, Krushna Abhishek and Vijay Ishwarlal Pawar; and choreographer Ganesh Acharya and dancer Sambhavana Seth.
Also read: Operation Karaoke: Sunny Leone will support BJP if husband Daniel given overseas citizen status
For the operation, Cobra Post introduced themselves as representatives of a political party who’re seeking favours from the public figures and their powerful social media reach ahead of the 2019 Loksabha elections.
The celebrities were expected to post messages from their Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts and pose them as their personal opinions. Cobrapost claims the celebrities were willing to accept large sums of money—the majority of which would be in cash—in exchange.
While most were discussing the offer, four celebrities were exception to the rule. Arshad Warsi, Vidya Balan, Raza Murad and Saumya Tandon refused to take part in the exercise when approached by reporters of Cobrapost.
