Mumbai: Within 24 hours of submitting a complaint letter accusing T-series head honcho Bhushan Kumar of sexual harassment, the woman retracted her complaint claiming she was ‘mentally unstable’ and cooked up the story in poor taste. Oshiwara police said the handwritten complaint letter was submitted by a T-series employee on Wednesday and hours later submitted a typed withdrawal letter on Thursday morning. This comes just when the #MeToo movement was dying down.
According to police sources, the woman submitted a complaint letter on Wednesday evening, which stated she was sexually exploited by Kumar under the pretext of helping her to get a job in T-series and was later sexually harassed by him while they were working on a Bollywood project. The woman also claimed Kumar had promised her a role in a film as he saw ‘great potential’ in her and wanted to sign her for a three-film deal.
However, when these hollow promise never saw the light of the day, she approached Oshiwara police, accusing Kumar of sexually harassing her, only to retract the same within 24 hours. The woman submitted another letter to Oshiwara police station’s senior police inspector stating she had approached the police against Kumar ‘out of frustration and depression’ and her allegations against him were ‘malicious’.
“I had no such intention to malign his reputation and shall not make any false statement and allegation against him in future,” her letter read. Manoj Kumar Sharma, Additional Commissioner of Police (West Region) said, “The woman said she was mentally unstable and filed a false complaint in poor taste. Since the complaint was withdrawn, no action was initiated against Kumar.” Meanwhile, a statement issued by Kumar’s company rebuffed the allegations levelled against him and said the woman had tried to extort money from Kumar’s uncle, Krishan, and the latter had approached police regarding the same on Monday.
The statement read, “On January 14, Krishan Kumar filed a complaint against the said lady at Amboli police station. The lady for quite a while was threatening Krishan Kumar to extort money from him. After several calls and ignoring them initially, Krishan Kumar had to go ahead and file a complaint against her. The lady threatened him that if she doesn’t get the asked money, she will file a false complaint of sexual assault against him and also drag his nephew Bhushan Kumar in it and she did so on Wednesday.”
