Mumbai: Gursimran Khamba, a former member of comedy collective AIB who was accused of sexual misconduct by a woman, has announced the launch of his new venture Light@27. In a lengthy post that came on Instagram just hours after AIB announced that its YouTube channel is “dead” for the foreseeable future, Khamba spoke about his new project and explained why he withdrew from an inquiry by a committee set-up by AIB.
Opening up seven months after the allegations against him surfaced when the #MeToo movement was at its peak, Khamba wrote: “An allegation was made by someone with whom I shared a deep personal relationship. Since the allegation surfaced, an informal committee was set up to look into it.
“The committee constituted was neither a court/tribunal nor an internal complaints committee set up under the POSH (Prevention of Sexual Harassment) Act. Nevertheless, because I had nothing to hide, I voluntarily chose to participate and began by extending all possible co-operation to this committee. However, this process which lasted 4 months was replete with procedural lapses and did not follow principles of natural justice.”
“Despite my repeated requests to follow due process, these lapses continued. At this stage. I requested the committee to recuse itself and a fresh committee to be constituted. My request was denied and hence I was left with no choice but to withdraw from the enquiry. Till date, I maintain that I am happy to cooperate with any committee that is constituted fairly and follows principles of natural justice.”
Khamba’s side of the story emerged after AIB said in its statement that during the course of the investigation, Khamba had stepped away from the process citing issues with the procedure. “Gursimran Khamba will no longer be involved in operations at AIB, and will be working independent of us,” AIB said.
Now Khamba is focussed on his new venture Light@27. “It is a comedy consultancy which will offer content and strategy solutions across live and digital media.
“The silver lining, however. is that through all of this, I got a chance to reflect and think about what I’m truly passionate about, who I want to work with and what I’d want the next chapter of my life to be.”
Khamba was last year accused of sexual harassment by a woman who claimed he “hooked up two-three times, consensually and continued being friends”, but things escalated when on two separate occasions, Khamba tried “repeatedly to make out with me while we were hanging out”. He had denied the claims.
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