“I’m not the only one they’ve spread this news about; there are other artists as well. I feel that playing with someone’s feelings is very wrong,” he said. “You know, because of this fake news, I was awake the entire night up to 6AM. People were calling me up and I kept reassuring them that I am indeed alive.”
Mahmood revealed that some of his colleagues even stopped shooting to immediately check up on him. “They couldn’t believe the news, like how could this even happen? They had only met me recently, too. Oftentimes, you know what to expect when someone is unwell, but this was understandably too sudden for them.”
The misinformation didn’t stop at work, however. It spread like wildfire through the Aitebaar actor’s relatives as well. “My daughter found out through her in-laws, and she began panicking. So she called her mother while I was in Karachi, and my wife assured my daughter that she had talked to me only five minutes ago and that Alhamdulillah I was all right. I even got calls from abroad, from America and Canada, and they were all worried.”
For those disseminating such grave rumours, Mahmood had only one thing to say, “All I want to request is that please don’t spread something without thinking it through.”
When told of yet another rumour that he and Hina Dilpazeer had left their hit sitcom Bulbulay, Mahmood said, “I don’t know what people get out of doing this. Narrating false things is already forbidden in our religion, so why must you sin? And this won’t even affect me in the long term, but it’s all being recorded in your list of deeds.”
The Do Bol actor mentioned that he was advised to film a video message addressing these baseless rumours. In the video, he reiterated the point that while he doesn’t mind harmless pranks, this is a step too far, especially since it could prove detrimental for certain people in his family.
“My brother is a heart patient, and he called me up in tears,” Mahmood said. “It was so disturbing for everyone involved – my family, my relatives, my friends, and even my colleagues.”