Anurag Kashyap says he knew about sexual harassment claims against Vikas Bahl, apologises to victim
Hindustan TimesBollywood director and producer Anurag Kashyap has accepted that he knew of the sexual abuse allegations against Phantom Films co-owner Vikas Bahl, levelled by a former employee of his company. Anurag shared a two-page explanation on Twitter after Huffington Post India published an article on Saturday detailing the victim’s account of assault and Anurag’s statement that “we didn’t handle it well and I cannot blame anybody but myself”. Anurag said that the woman decided not to tell him about the incident—that happened after a pre-launch party for his film Bombay Velvet in 2015— earlier, as she thought he was suffering from depression himself after the film failed to do well at the box office and was also thrashed by critics. Since there was such a lack of trust and a deep-seated belief that we would protect Vikas and not her, we were severely hamstrung in our ability to not take any further action.” After sharing the post, Anurag also changed his display photo to a black banner on Twitter.