Rupankar offers unconditional apology on "Who is KK" rant

After being trolled on social media for his unsavoury comments against Bollywood singer KK, hours before his tragic death in Kolkata, popular Bengali singer Rupankar Bagchi on Friday offered an unconditional apology to the bereaved family.

Rupankar said the trolls were after him on social media for the past three days, and the experience was "traumatic and unprecedented".

"I am getting physical threats and even threats to my life on the social media, over the phone and outside," he told reporters at Kolkata Press Club.

Reading out from a statement, he said "My unconditional apology for KK's family, the people of Mumbai and scores of his fans, and people who loved him in Kolkata and all over the country. I regret the momentary indiscretion when I was making that Facebook live, which led to the present situation. I have since deleted the Facebook post but the attacks continue".

Rupankar said that all he had wished to say was that the Bengali audiences should rally behind Bengali musicians in the same way as is displayed in the concerts of artistes from Mumbai. 

About his comments on Facebook that several singers from Bengal are better than KK, Rupankar said "Now, I think I shouldn't have named them without their consent."

After watching a video of KK's previous show on Monday evening, he had said on Facebook that he might be a wonderful singer but there are better vocalists than him in West Bengal and named a few of the leading ones.

Rupankar deleted the video following KK's death but it had gone viral on social media by then, triggering an outrage that refused to die down. Several memes about Rupankar circulated on social media and the trolling continued.

Singers like Iman, Raghab and Rupam Islam, who were named by Rupankar to be better than KK, have already distanced themselves from his comments saying he should have taken their consent before bracketing their names with him in the Facebook post.