Kanika Dhillon Lashes Out At Delhi Restaurant For Not Allowing Woman Who Wore Saree; Eatery Releases Statement

Kanika Dhillon, who has written stories, screenplay and dialogues of several popular films like Haseen Dillruba, Kedarnath and many others, recently lashed out at a Delhi-based restaurant Aquila over a viral video, in which a lady was allegedly not allowed to enter the restaurant as she was wearing a saree. The Delhi-based lady, Anita Choudhary took to Twitter and shared about an incident that happened with her.

She posted a video, in which the staffer is not allowing her to enter the hotel. She tweeted, "Saree is not allowed in Aquila restaurant as Indian Saree is now not an smart outfit.What is the concrete definition of Smart outfit plz tell me @AmitShah @HardeepSPuri @CPDelhi @NCWIndia Please define smart outfit so I will stop wearing saree @PMishra_Journo #lovesaree." (sic)

Well, the video and tweet went viral on social media, and netizens started questioning the restaurant for its rules. Kanika Dhillon reacted to the tweet and slammed the eatery. She tweeted, "Omg!Won't allow women wearing saris in restaurants?I guess ths restaurant shouldn't be Allowed 2operate in India cos effectively they r banning most o d women population loving n proudly wearing saris!ths restaurant can relocate 2France!won't have such #sari issues there phaps!." (sic)

One of the Twitter users replied to Kanika Dhillon's tweet stating that restaurant has already released the statement about the whole incident. Twitter user Smita Paul replied, "There is a statement by the restaurant Kanika, apparently the lady slapped an employee.... and to diffuse the situation the staff said so, which is wrong anyways.... but sometimes a short edited clip can be dangerous and spread wrong infomation."

Let us tell you, Aquila Restaurant (Delhi) shared a statement on their official Instagram handle along with a couple of videos, in which one can see a lady wearing a saree slapping the staff member. Apart from that, the management also mentioned that they allow women in saree to their restaurants.

Aquila Restaurant's statement reads, "To all our Dear Stakeholders, We chose to stay silent till now and have been patiently watching the situation related to the incident that took place at Aquila on the 19th of September unfold. At Aquila, we believe in honouring our Indian community and have always welcomed our guests in all dress codes from modern to traditional.

Currently, a 10 second clip has been circulating in the media showing only a small snippet of what happened during a period of 1 hour here on Sunday. A guest visited the restaurant and was politely requested to wait at the gate as there was no reservation under her name. However, while we discussed internally as to where we could seat them, the guest entered the restaurant and began to fight and abuse our staff. What unfolded after was beyond our imagination, with the guest slapping our manager as you can see in the CCTV video footage attached in our post above.

We believe in utmost transparency and are hence attaching snippets of people who have visited our restaurant in a traditional dress code previously. To tackle the situation and request the guest to leave, one of our gate managers made a statement on sarees not being a part of our smart casual dress code and our whole team apologies for the same.

Aquila is a homegrown brand and each member of the team stands tall as a proud Indian. Our gate managers statement in noway is a representation of the entire teams view on the dress code. Nowhere in our company policy does it say that we will refuse entry to anybody in ethnic wear. While we have all the right to take grated steps for the violence by the guest against our staff, we have chose to maintain peace so far but in accordance with our policy of maintaining transparency with our stakeholders we are now issuing this statement.

Team Aquila

Video 1 - Footage of the lady assaulting and slapping our team.
Video 2 - Plenty of customers entering Aquila (fuss-free) in sarees." (sic)

Watch the videos here

The incident has indeed become the hot topic of discussion on social media. What is your take on it? Do let us know in the comments section below!