News Desk |
Bollywood actress Tanushree Datta has accused veteran actor Nana Patekar of sexually assaulting actresses and publicly beating the female co-actors. The actress in her statement claimed that Nana Patekar has the history of sexual misconduct.
When asked about the impact and magnitude of the #MeToo campaign in Indian film industry, Datta fearlessly shed light on her personal experience of sexual misconduct.
She referred her decade-old encounter with Nana Patekar on the sets of Horn ‘Ok’ Pleasss. She claimed that Patekar continuously misbehaved with her during the shoot of a song that eventually made her quit the movie.
“Everyone knows about Nana Patekar that he has always been disrespectful towards women,” she said. “People in the industry know about his background, that he has beaten actresses, he has molested them, his behavior with women has always been crude but no publication has printed anything about it.”
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She asserted that #MeToo would fail to achieve its desired outcome unless all the stakeholders in the entertainment industry equally acknowledge it.
She added, “Akshay Kumar has made few films with Nana Patekar in last eight years and Rajinikanth also recently worked with him (in Kaala). If such big stars will keep working with these culprits then there’s no hope for any movement to happen.”
“Everyone has gossiped about this but they’ve never spoken. People with this kind of character speak like this against the kind of character that I have because they say she does glamourous roles so must be glamorous and all,” Dutta shared.
“Behind the back, they are so dirty. When you are in the industry you hear so many stories about these actors. But these things never take surface because they are PR packaged very well. They will give some money to some poor farmers. How much they do and how much they don’t know, no one knows. But all this is just for show,” she added.
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“I complained to the producer and the director about him pulling me and teaching me dance steps. Instead of paying heed to what I was saying, they wanted to listen to Nana Patekar’s demand of doing an intimate step with me,” Dutta commented.
The campaign against sexual harassment has so far been unable to cause upheaval in the Indian entertainment industry. Is the Indian film industry really a ‘safe place’ for females or the issue has been deliberately compromised to hide the sexual predators in the industry?