Actor Nana Patekar (second from left) presenting the Silver Peacock award for Best Actor (Female) at the 45th International Film Festival of India, 2014. Wikicommons/ Ministry of information and Broadcasting. Some rights reserved.
Women are a force to be reckoned with. That is the take-away from the #MeTooIndia juggernaut convulsing the subcontinent of late. ‘The List’ of perpetrators or casualties, depending on your take, encompasses a veritable who’s who of the male elite.
The Indian edition of the global #MeToo phenomenon blossomed with the formidable beauty of a Venus flytrap early this October of 2018, with a decade-old case of sexual abuse that occurred in the Indian film industry of Bollywood. This alleged incident was freshly recounted in harrowing detail by actor Tanushree Dutta in an interview with the entertainment portal Zoom TV. Dutta alleged that she was inappropriately touched and groped by her famous co-actor Nana Patekar on the film set of a Bollywood production entitled Horn ‘OK’ Pleassss back in 2008. After she repulsed his advances, Dutta claims that Patekar called goons belonging to the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, a regional political outfit, who in turn trashed her car. Indeed video footage exists depicting this vandalism. Not unlike the Harvey Weinstein scandal in the west, this incident served as the catalyst for the #MeToo movement in India.
