One year later, after despicably littering a beautiful Goan village, Karan Johar and Dharma Productions fail to apologize!

PANAJI: In spite of Goa’s Waste Management Minister Michael Lobo issuing a warning to Karan Johar‘s Dharma Productions to either apologise or pay a fine for murderously and shamelessly littering the heavenly Nerul village in North Goa, post wrapping up a shoot; and a local social forum Lokhancho Ekvott raising a stink on social media, neither Johar nor his company felt it fit to issue an apology to the people of Goa.

“Tender an apology on Facebook that it was an error and accept the fault. If they don’t do it, we will fine them. My department will impose a fine on Dharma Productions,” Lobo was quoted as saying by PTI last year. But Johar couldn’t care a damn even for the Goan lawmaker. And the MLA too forgot to take Johar to task eventually, in spite of his outbursts on national Tv?

The issue of littering and dumping tons of garbage, including sanitary napkins, used PPE kits, masks and other biomedical waste, came to light after residents of Nerul in North Goa uploaded videos showing the waste, allegedly dumped by the crew of Dharma Productions, which was there shooting for a Deepika Padukone-starrer.

The state-run Entertainment Society of Goa (ESG), which had given permission for the shoot, issued a show-cause notice to Dilip Borkar, the local line producer hired by Dharma Productions to coordinate with local authorities.

However, the line producer – a habitual offender and chronic liar, denied littering the village, in spite of glaring videos and photographs of the hideous act, and conveniently – as he is used to doing, passed the buck. He said the movie was shot in a villa in Nerul and waste was dumped at a place designated by the local panchayat for pickup and disposal.

While the Panchayat authorities and the line producer traded charges for days, Johar and his company quietly slipped out of public glare, skirting and shirking all responsibility for the criminal act, with most Goans unfortunately forgetting the despicable incident within days.