The actor with his selfless campaign for homeless migrant workers during lockdown earned him huge gratitude. Interestingly, it gave him a heroic stature that has often eluded him after so many years. Social media was buzzing with news related to his kindness and magnanimity.
In May 2020, during the nationwide lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Sood helped thousands of stranded Indian migrant workers to reach their homes by arranging buses, special trains, and chartered flights for them. In July 2020 he arranged a chartered flight to bring home over 1,500 Indian students stranded in Kyrgyzstan, flying them from Bishkek to Varanasi. His charity during the pandemic was lauded, and he was hailed as a real-life hero in India.
On 25 July 2020, a video of a farmer’s daughters plowing a field, like bulls with a yoke on their shoulders, went viral over social media. Sood quickly sent the family a tractor. On 5 August 2020, he helped 101 medical students, predominantly from Tamil Nadu, who was stranded in Moscow during the lockdown; reach Chennai safely on a chartered flight arranged by him after they contacted his team for help.
Be it sending migrants back to their home towns through all possible means of transport, or helping someone in need of critical surgery, or just someone needing a house — actor Sonu Sood has been the first one to extend a helping hand during this pandemic. The entire Covid-19 crisis till this point has seen him emerges as a Good Samaritan.
However, of late some people started calling him names and terms such as ‘biggest scam of 2020’. They claim Sood didn’t actually help migrants on such a large scale, and even shared screenshots, alleging that most of the people who sought help from him on Twitter have now deactivated their accounts. Whatever might be the reason for his philanthropic work soon he came in controversies.
He cites an example of one incident, which was questioned, and the people he helped himself came forward to clarify. “Someone said ‘Yeh log to foreign se kisi ko nahi laaye’. A couple of days back, a flight landed from the Philippines, and they replied on that tweet of students ‘You don’t exist, it’s fake. The students sent their boarding passes and flight number, along with college names to check. Suddenly, these trolls vanished. These are paid, people. One-two people run 100-200 accounts,” he shares.
Let us not get into undue controversy, because at least he is helping the needy people. Even if it is a publicity stunt if it’s a kind of his investment to get the attention, what’s wrong? That is helping thousands of people! Even in May 2021 when we were having 4 Lakhs + cases he was still helping people, with the arrangement of Oxygen Cylinders and much more. I don’t really know if a man can do this much for a long time if he doesn’t do it heartily. But still, let us assume it’s publicity…Let it be then! Such publicities are good for the country.
About the so-called deleted accounts of those who asked for help? The actor already clarified that those tweets had sensitive data, which the concerned people seeking help deleted afterwards. “Just think… if someone had shared their Aadhaar card, phone number, and after he had helped them, they delete it. Why would they want their details to remain there?
In fact, the actor requests the trolls to use the money they earn from this, to further help those in need. “Their kitchen runs with this. They earn money on every tweet, which is fair enough. I’m telling them to run their kitchens, but the money which they get from trolling, help someone else, don’t keep it all at home.
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