Randeep Hooda removed as UN Treaty ambassador after 2012 remark deemed offensive

Bollywood actor Randeep Hooda is being visited by ghosts of his past after a video from 2012 resurfaced, effectively getting him fired as a UN Treaty ambassador.

Hooda has been removed as the ambassador of the Convention for the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), an environmental treaty of the United Nations, a move confirmed by the treaty’s secretariat in a statement on Friday.

The decision comes days after a resurfaced video from 2012 went viral on social media in which Hooda is seen making a joke about  Mayawati, the former Chief Minister of Indian state Uttar Pradesh, with many branding his comments as ‘sexist’ and ‘casteist’ – Mayawati is a Dalit woman.

The joke was also labeled “offensive” by the CMS Secretariat, who also added that it “did not reflect the values of CMS Secretariat or the United Nations.

One Twitter user had tweeted, “If this does not explain how casteist and sexist this society is, especially towards Dalit women, I don’t know what will.”

Randeep Hooda was appointed as the CMS ambassador in February 2020, nominated alongside Australian environmentalist Sacha Dench and British biologist Ian Redmond OBE.

Watch the video here:

if this does not explain how casteist and sexist this society is, especially towards dalit women, i don’t know what will. the “joke”, the audacity, the crowd. randeep hooda, top bollywood actor talking about a dalit woman, who has been the voice of the oppressed. pic.twitter.com/lVxTJKnj53

— Agatha Srishtie (@SrishtyRanjan) May 25, 2021