Siddharth Shukla is a POS.
I don’t think Arti is in love with him, I think she just wants equality and respect in their friendship. She’s seen how he treats Shehnaz with respect and knows that he is capable of doing so, but he doesn’t bother to give her any respect - And due to becoming too attached before realising this, she has expectations - that he does for her what she does for him. So she gets affected when those expectations aren’t met.
If she has a history of anxiety - (and for some people anxiety is not something that goes away, it’s there for life, people use different methods to keep it under control. They can’t stay sheltered forever without experiencing stuff in life, they have to go out there, knowing that emotional turmoil or experiences may trigger an attack but that they’ll get through it, it’s an ongoing continuous battle) - then this is something that’s really got to her, that a friendship she’s given to, been loyal towards, has been so one-sided.
I hope she is able to completely cut away from him. I don’t believe for one second that when a friend is being so loyal to you and giving so much to the friendship, one doesn’t realise it. Shukla just wants to take it all without feeling any guilt or the need to reciprocate. It’s why when she questions him on an expectation, he doesn’t reflect but goes on a guilt-ridden attack.
Today, the behaviour of not going to comfort her, talk to her nicely or be there for her, was just inhumane - and what was even more ghatiya was that he seemed only interested in trying to shift the blame that he was the cause of it.