There’s trouble brewing around the Young Stunners’ upcoming concerts in India

Pakistan’s most popular rap duo, Young Stunners — comprising rappers Talha Anjum and Talhah Yunus — is set to make its way to India for the first time as part of a three-city tour in December, according to Rolling Stone India.

Joined by producer Jokhay, the Karachi-based act is reported to play in Mumbai on December 13, Bengaluru on December 21 and New Delhi on December 25.

The rappers, however, haven’t made any announcements about this tour on their social media handles. Meanwhile, they’re actively sharing updates about tours in Australia and Canada.

But all does not seem to be well with the concerts. Skillbox, a ticketing platform, delisted events for the Young Stunners’ India tour after receiving backlash for promoting them amid outrage over the rappers’ past tweets in which they mocked Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman — the Indian pilot captured and later returned by Pakistan — and called out Indian premier Narendra Modi.

The platform declared that it takes pride in being “Indian” so anyone “inciting hate or violence against India” would not be supported by it. “We do not support sentiments that incite hate or violence against India. In light of recent revelations brought to our notice, we have delisted the event from our platform. It was deeply disturbing to see our team members being personally targeted. We would like to clarify that we are not and never were the promoters of the event,” the announcement read.

Tweets against the Young Stunners range from condemnation of the rappers for “hate-mongering” in the past and demands to cancel their shows.

One user wrote on X, “Kaun Talha? The one who wrote tweets against Kashmir. The one who spewed hate against Modi. The one who mocked Abhinandan. India’s hater Talha. The Talha whose show tickets will be purchased by Indians. Such a shame that he is allowed to do a show in India.”

Others echoed this sentiment.

The organiser for the Young Stunners’ tour, Desi Disco Entertainment, says that the duo’s shows in India are still on, with registrations open on another website for the Young Stunners Mumbai gig.

Speaking to The Print, the head of Desi Disco, Vaheed Khan, alleged that the outrage was part of a larger strategy to target the show over refusals to collaborate with a few handles.

“I will make sure the show happens and will not be bogged down by a few tweets,” he said. “Many of these pages wanted a cut from the revenue and when we refused to put their logo, the tweets started surfacing. Half of the tweets are fake and have nothing to do with either Talha or Pakistan.”

Khan also alleged that after the show was announced on August 1, 600 people were employed to conduct 16,000 registrations that were completed within the first 12 hours in all three cities.

Young Stunners have the largest number of monthly listeners on Spotify from Mumbai (152,583 listeners) and New Delhi (245,000 listeners).

From the looks of it, the show is still on, but Images has reached out to Young Stunners for an official confirmation and is currently awaiting a response.