The designer never named Mrunal Thakur, but her Instagram caption arrived aimed squarely at an old body-shaming controversy the actress had already apologised for.
Masaba Gupta didn't type Mrunal Thakur's name anywhere in her post. She didn't have to.
The designer re-shared Bipasha Basu's new Elle India Digital cover on Instagram and opened with a straightforward compliment: "I am very happy to see Bipasha on a cover. You see, she is the last of the OGs." She went further, writing that there "won't be another Bipasha because everything is a cookie cutter template today," and dismissed the current crop of actresses as "boring and dull" by comparison, adding they don't inspire "one bit of confidence."
Then came the part that actually travelled.
"And @bipashabasu- I love your athletic build. I love the muscle- and I want more thanks to the standard of fitness you set," Masaba wrote. "Too bad if someone doesn't see that as feminine."
Nobody named Mrunal Thakur. The internet did the naming for her within minutes. "Ohh Masaba just shaded Mrunal Thakur," read one widely shared reaction. Another, more economical: "Masabaaa cooked."
The reference wasn't hard to place. A throwback clip of Mrunal on Kumkum Bhagya, in conversation with co-star Arjit Taneja about fitness and the kind of partner one might want, had resurfaced online in 2025 and gone the way these things go. In the clip, discussing physiques, Mrunal says of Bipasha: "Do you want to marry a girl who is manly with muscles? Go marry Bipasha. Listen, I am far better than Bipasha, ok."
That one line did more damage than the whole old interview probably deserved. Users called it body-shaming, plain and simple, and it stuck around long enough that Mrunal addressed it directly. She said she'd been 19 when she made the comment and hadn't understood how her words would land. Body-shaming, she clarified, was never the intent. She said she wished she'd chosen different words.
That should, in theory, have closed the loop. It didn't, not fully, and Masaba's post over the weekend is proof the clip still has a pulse online.
What's notable here is what's missing. Bipasha herself hasn't commented on either the original clip or Masaba's post defending her. Mrunal hasn't responded to Masaba either, not publicly, not yet. So what's circulating right now is one designer's Instagram caption and a comment section doing the interpretive work for her.
Whether Mrunal responds at all is the open question. She's already apologised once for the original remark, and a second round of clarification over a post that doesn't even name her would be an odd position to be pushed into. For now the row exists mostly in screenshots and quote-tweets, with three women connected to it and none of them actually talking to each other about it in public.
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