Three months after Outlook did a cover story, #memum on the casting couch in the Indian film industry, raising a question whether the victims would ever launch a Hollywood-like #metoo movement to expose its own Harvey Weinsteins, a former beauty queen-turned-actress has sought to accuse veteran actor Nana Patekar of molesting and harassing female actors like her.
In an interview to Zoom TV, as per a report on NDTV, Tanushree Dutta recalled a ten-year-old incident and alleged that Patekar had harassed her during the shooting of their film, Horn ‘OK’ Pleasessss! She claimed that Nata Patekar’s indecent behaviour with women was an open secret in the film industry but nobody spoke about it."Everyone knows about Nana Patekar that he has always been disrespectful towards women. People in the industry know about his background... that he has beaten actresses, he has molested them, his behaviour with women has always been crude but no publication has printed anything about it," she was quoted as saying.
She also said that #metoo movement would not reach India until everybody acknowledged what had happened to her. “There is no scope for a better work environment if A-listers do not boycott actors like Nana Patekar,” she added.
Dutta, 34, had accused Patekar of harassing and misbehaving with her during a song that she was supposed to do for the movie starring Patekar in the lead. She later walked out of it. Patekar had denied her charges later on.
The Jamshedpur-born actress had won the Miss India-Universe crown in 2004 and went on to make a successful debut in Bollywood with Ashiq Banaya Aapne the next year. Even though she subsequently starred in a few movies, her career was cut short allegedly due to this controversy.
In its May 30 issue, Outlook had done a cover story, #memum investigating prevalence of the casting couch in the Indian film industry. Even though starlet Sri Reddy had named some actors and film-makers from the Telugu film industry of sexually exploiting actresses like her, no Bollywood actress had yet come forward to name and shame anybody for similar offences.
