Mersal row escalates: Actor Vishal raided by GST team day after accusing BJP leader of advocating piracy

Days after a controversy broke out over references to GST in the Tamil film ‘Mersal’, a GST intelligence team raided the house of movie star Vishal, according to several media reports. A three-member team began the raid at Vishal’s house at 2 pm on Monday, Times Now reported. The raids were conducted to check his past excise records since he is a film producer and distributor, Outlook quoted GST officials as saying. The raids come a day after the actor lashed out at BJP leader H Raja, accusing him of advocating piracy. Raja told a Tamil private television channel that he watched online a few scenes of the movie “which people said, had content which had hurt their sentiments,” according to a report in The Hindu. On Sunday, Vishal hit out at Raja and was quoted in The Hindu as saying, “A national leader of a national party has just confessed to watching a newly released film not in the theatre, but illegally. Being a leader who is known by the public, how can you support piracy without any shame?” However, Raja later claimed that he only watched a few clips of the film on his phone and did not have the patience to sit through the whole film, as reported by News18.