“How come nobody in Bollywood has sleepless nights when a woman becomes a victim of abuse and is not able to work due to the trauma and ostracisation?”Tanushree Dutta, Actor
questioned Tanushree Dutta in response to Aamir Khan’s justification of his decision to work with #MeToo accused director Subhash Kapoor on Mogul, an upcoming biopic on T-Series producer Gulshan Kumar.
In October 2018, Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao announced that they were stepping away from the film, which was to be co-produced by Aamir Khan Productions and T-Series, as it involved a person who had been “accused of sexual misconduct”. While Kapoor was ousted from Mogul following the allegations, he is now back on board.
On Monday, 9 September, Aamir Khan issued a statement to the media saying that he considered Kapoor, who has been accused of molesting actor Geetika Tyagi in 2014, to be innocent until proven guilty. He has said that in hindsight, he felt his earlier decision to leave the project had “inadvertently cost a person – who is yet to be tried in a court of law – to lose his livelihood.” He added that he was “very troubled” after hearing that Kapoor was subsequently dropped from other projects and that production houses were reluctant to work with him following the allegations.
Speaking to mid-day, Tanushree said that Aamir’s decision is reflective of Bollywood’s “selective” compassion which amounts to “convenience and ignorance”. “Nobody bothered to ask me how I was doing when my livelihood was snatched away after the Horn Ok Pleassss harassment episode. No compassion for me, Aamir?” she said.
Reacting to Aamir’s belief that Kapoor is innocent until proven otherwise, Tanushree also said that only survivors of sexual assault “understand the pain of having to see their perpetrators flourish while they wait for a court verdict that puts a stamp of approval on their complaint.” She lamented, “If every alleged harasser gets reinstated, then the goal of an abuse-free workplace becomes a distant dream.”
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