Zaira Wasim is back on Twitter and Instagram after a day’s break. The former actor had deleted her social media accounts on Friday after outrage over a tweet, in which she had quoted a verse from the Quran on locust attacks. 

Returning to Twitter on Saturday, Zaira explained why she deleted her account. “Because I’m just a human, like everyone else, who’s allowed to take a break from everything whenever the noise inside my head or around me reaches it’s peak,” she wrote. 
 

A few days ago, following news of locust attacks in parts of India, Zaira had tweeted a verse from the Quran on the plagues in Egypt. 

“So We sent upon them the flood and locusts and lice and frogs and blood: Signs openly self-explained: but they were steeped in arrogance- a people given to sin -Qur’an 7:133 (sic),” she had shared. Her tweet was slammed for seemingly justifying the attacks using religious text. Others, however, defended her for sharing her thoughts. 

Zaira had courted controversy in 2019 when she announced her decision to quit the Hindi film industry. The actor, who won a National Film Award for her debut performance in Dangal (2016), had reasoned that her acting career interfered with her faith. 

“This field indeed brought a lot of love, support and applause my way, but what it also did was to lead me to a path of ignorance, as I silently and unconsciously transitioned out of ‘imaan’,” she had shared in a post.