Ajay Devgn has come out in support of the MeToo movement, which is sweeping India. The actor has said that he will not tolerate misconduct and has vowed to take action against anyone accused of such behaviour within his company.
“I’m disturbed by all the happenings with regards to #MeToo. My company and I believe in providing women with utmost respect and safety. If anyone has wronged even a single woman, neither ADF nor I will stand for it,” he wrote on Twitter on Friday.
I’m disturbed by all the happenings with regards to #MeToo. My company and I believe in providing women with utmost respect and safety. If anyone has wronged even a single woman, neither ADF nor I will stand for it.
— Ajay Devgn (@ajaydevgn) October 12, 2018
While Ajay Devgn has not named or even hinted at anybody in his tweet, his statement comes hours after filmmaker Luv Ranjan denied the allegations made against him after he was named as an alleged sexual harasser by an actress, who wished her identity to remain anonymous in an interview with mid-day.
Earlier this year, Luv Ranjan announced his new film with Ajay Devgn and Ranbir Kapoor leading the cast, the shooting of which was said to begin next year. On Friday, the director was implicated in a #MeToo account after the unnamed actress accused the filmmaker of misconduct during a script reading session of Pyaar Ka Punchnama.
The actress alleged, she was made uncomfortable with the queries made by the filmmaker, following which she left the meeting and opted out of the film: "I went and sat in my car and started shaking and crying. I'd escaped," she said.
In her interview, she also alleged Luv Ranjan asked her to 'strip' at the look test of Pyaar Ka Punchnama. After she quit the film, Mr Ranjan allegedly continued to get in touch with her, saying he was 'misunderstood': "As for Luv, he kept sending me messages for about a month, saying I'd misunderstood him, but he never apologised."
Speaking to mid-day, Mr Ranjan dismissed the allegations as 'absurd' and added that he'll even cooperate in a legal enquiry if the need arises: "It's absurd. It's so absurd that I don't know what to say except that I deny it. I don't know how to react to an anonymous allegation beyond this and am willing to face any legitimate enquiry."
The #MeToo movement caught up with Bollywood after Tanushree Dutta revived a decade-old allegation of harassment against Nana Patekar, accusing him of sexual misconduct on the sets of a 2008 film. Other industry celebs such as Sajid Khan, Subhash Ghai, Alok Nath, Rajat Kapoor, Kailash Kher, among others, have also been implicated as alleged sexual predators.
Aamir Khan and his wife Kiran Rao recently stepped away from a film because of sexual misconduct allegations against a team member.
The actor’s statement arrives after several Bollywood personalities such as directors Subhash Ghai, Sajid Khan, Vikas Bahl and Rajat Kapoor, actors such as Alok Nath and singers such as Kailash Kher and Abhijeet were named as having sexually harassed multiple women over the years.
Action against the likes of Bahl and Nath has already been initiated, while Phantom Films, the company Bahl founded with filmmakers Madhu Mantena, Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane, has been disbanded. Kashyap and Motwane have apologised for misconduct taking place within their company, and Kashyap has stepped down from his role in MAMI.
Devgn’s wife, actor Kajol, in a recent interview to NDTV said, “I’ve never seen it but I have heard about it and it’s always in rumour form. You never know it, no one is going to come up to you and say ‘Hey, I did this!’ I don’t know how much of it is actually the truth or not. If it had happened in front of me, I’m sure I would have stood up or done something about it. Never happened to me. I don’t think it would have happened in front of me.”
