On 28 June, Bollywood star Madhuri Dixit was slammed online after a purported poster appeared that claimed that she would be participating in an event in Houston hosted by Pakistani event manager Rehan Siddiqui. While Rehan Siddiqui has organised a large number of events in the USA featuring Bollywood stars, he has come under the radar of the Indian authorities for allegedly using funds raised from his events to finance Kashmir-related anti-India activities in the United States. In 2020, Salman Khan had cancelled his Houston event after the allegations against Siddiqui emerged.
Therefore, people were shocked that Madhuri Dixit is appearing in an event hosted by the same Siddiqui, even after allegations against him became well known. Based on a poster advertising the event on 16 August, several netizens slammed Dixit. The social media outrage was then covered by media houses like Navbharat Times and Free Press Journal.
However, OpIndia has found that apart from one single poster, there is no other evidence of any event of Madhuri Dixit hosted by Rehan Siddiqui in Houston or anywhere in the USA. Moreover, the design of the poster suggests that it could be fake because it seems to be created using a poster of Madhuri Dixit’s upcoming tour of several cities in the USA next month, which does not include Houston.
The poster mentions the tagline Forever Queen of Bollywood Madhuri Dixit, and mentions that tickets are available on Sulekha for the event on 16th August Friday. However, when we checked the Sulekha website, we could not find any mention of this event.
The events section of the Sulekha website has tickets available for Madhuri Dixit’s US tour in August, but it does not include any event in Houston, Texas. It mentions concerts in New York on 8 August, Virginia on 10 August, Atlanta on 11 August and New Jersey on 15 August. This tour is organised by World Star Entertainment, an event management company that organises programs featuring Bollywood actors, singers etc. The company is run by one Atique Sheikh.
World Star Entertainment’s Instagram page mentions some other events of Madhuri Dixit during the tour, which are 9 August in Dallas and 10 August in Chicago, apart from the events mentioned by Sulekha.
It could be possible that Rehan Siddiqui hosted the event in Houston coinciding with Madhuri Dixit’s presence in the USA in August. However several facts suggest that there is no such event, and the poster could be fake.
First, there is no mention of any such event on Rehan Siddiqui’s Instagram and Facebook pages. His posts show that while he has been organising events with Pakistani stars regularly, he has not hosted any Indian artists in recent years. It is evident that after he was accused of terror links in India, Indian stars have not attended any event hosted by him. An online search also didn’t return any results of the event being organised in Houston with Madhuri Dixit.
Moreover, the poster being shared has the same design and tagline as the World Star Entertainment poster, which means that it is fake. Rehan Siddiqui has been in the business for a long time, and it is unlikely that he will copy his rival’s poster for his event.
The poster being shared uses the tagline Forever Queen of Bollywood Madhuri Dixit in the same design and typeface as the posters for the real tour of Dixit. A cursory glance shows that this poster has been created using the poster for the Virginia concert on 10 August. Madhuri Dixit’s photo along with the tagline has been retained, while the background and other text have been changed.
While the original poster’s photo has Madhuri Dixit’s body from head to waist, the photo has been cropped in the ‘Houston poster’, retaining only from head to chest. This could be done to remove the text in the original poster which was superimposed on the photo.
Therefore, it can be safely concluded that Rehan Siddiqui is not hosting any event featuring Madhuri Dixit in Houston on 16 August, and the poster being shared on social media to slam the Bollywood star seems to be fake. However, Madhuri Dixit has not reacted to the claim yet.
