‘Dirty excuse’: Sandeep Reddy Vanga on Animal and Andhra school attack

Filmmaker Sandeep Reddy Vanga has hit back at people linking his film Animal to last week’s chainsaw attack on schoolgirls in Andhra Pradesh, accusing them of using “a horrific tragedy as a dirty excuse to settle your personal scores”. He made the remarks in a post on X on Wednesday (4 November).

On 31 October, a 21-year-old man walked into a Class 10 classroom at a government school in Anantapur district and attacked a girl with a chainsaw. She suffered critical injuries, and a classmate who tried to protect her was also hurt. As The Indian Idiot reported earlier, police later shot and seriously injured the accused, saying he attacked officers who were trying to arrest him.

After the attack, several people on social media blamed violent blockbusters such as Animal and Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar. YouTuber Dhruv Rathee shared a report on the attack and wrote, “Special thanks to movies like Animal and Dhurandhar for giving templates to these criminals,” India Today reported. In one scene in Animal (2023), the young version of Ranbir Kapoor’s character barges into a classroom and fires a gun in front of students and a teacher.

Vanga did not name anyone, but his post is being seen as a reply to those critics. “When someone commits a heinous crime, the first response should be empathy & an attempt to understand the larger problem. Not finding a convenient scapegoat in cinema,” he wrote. He aimed his post at “those failed frustrated jobless male/female actors, few directors, producers & parasites, who suddenly appoint themselves as social reformers whenever an opportunity arises to take a dig at someone else’s work.”

“A tragedy deserves empathy 🙏, not opportunism. Learn the difference,” Vanga wrote at the end of his post.

Police have not linked the attack to any film. Online, the post split opinion again: some users agreed that screen violence needs questioning, while others argued that fiction cannot be blamed directly for real crimes, India Today reported.

Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma had made a similar argument last week. “Blaming films for rise in violence is like, blaming Ramayana for rise in kidnappings,” he wrote on X, according to The Indian Express. Animal, which earned over ₹900 crore worldwide, is getting a sequel, Animal Park.