I believe Tanushree Dutta; India-Stand Up, Speak Up, Be your own role models: Frieda Pinto

By Vandana Srivastawa

on October 03, 2018

Actress Tanushree Dutta brought the entire Bollywood out of its reverie when she accused veteran actor Nana Patekar of sexual harassment and intimidation on the sets of the 2008 film Horn Ok Pleasss. In a series of interviews, she alleged that the actor misbehaved with her, harassed her and even resorted to calling goons from a political party that tried to intimidate her and attacked her. Since then many Bollywood celebrities like Priyanka Chopra, Farhan Akhtar, Richa Chadha, Swara Bhasker, Twinkle Khanna, Parineeti Chopra, Renuka Shahane etc came out in support of her.

Now, Frieda Pinto has lent her support and solidarity to Tanushree. She shared a powerful post on her Instagram on the controversy that has raged Bollywood for the past few days. The opening lines of her post read, “Today, I interrupt my feed for a bit from all the fashion week poses to stand by what I truly believe. I believe Tanushree Dutta.”

She further wrote, “I don't need to know her personally, neither have been present on that horrendous day she got bullied, abused both sexually and psychologically, intimidated and shut down in order to corroborate her story. However, I do know what truth, hurt and abuse sounds like."

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bob_dLPn2m_/?utm_source=ig_embed

Frieda drew a parallel with Dr Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused US President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager. Her televised testimony prompted Republican Senator Jeff Flake to set in motion an FBI investigation into Judge Kavanaugh's alleged misconduct.

Tanushree’s version of events has been corroborated by senior journalist Janice Sequeira and Shyni Shetty who was the assistant director on the film. Even actress Daisy Shah who was assisting choreographer Ganesh Acharya at that time accepted that there were some altercations between Tanushree, Nana and the film’s makers but did not give her full support to the actress.

On the other hand, Nana has denied all these allegations and said that he will soon be holding a press conference in which he will answer all media questions related to the allegations made by Tanushree.