Indian actor Tanushree Dutta alleges Nana Patekar harassed her a decade ago

With Bill Cosby being sentenced to prison and Harvey Weinstein's future looking grim, the global #MeToo movement is witnessing powerful abusers falling from grace.

It was only a matter of time until its impact was felt in Bollywood; actor Tanushree Dutta, who had previously shared in 2008 that a fellow co-star had behaved with her inappropriately on set, has now named her harasser, stating it was veteran actor Nana Patekar.

"I want to take names - actor Nana Patekar, producer Sami Siddiqui, director Rakesh Sarang and choreographer Ganesh Acharya. When Nana Patekar misbehaved with me, he said out loud that he would do an intimate step with me in the song, which wasn’t mentioned in my contract. It was supposed to be a solo sequence of mine. I would feel very uncomfortable when he would come next to me and try to put his arm around me," she said in an interview with Zoom TV.

"He was grabbing me by the arms, pushing me around then he would ask the choreographers to move and teach me how to dance, and the next thing I know he wanted to do was an intimate sequence with me. It was ridiculous.”

She adds: “Everyone knows about Nana Patekar that he has always been disrespectful towards women. People in the industry know about his background, that he has beaten actresses, he has molested them, his behaviour with women has always been crude but no publication has printed anything about it.”

Dutta also says she was "probably one of the first people in the history of this country in the media field to speak up and stand up" against sexual misconduct.

"Everybody saw what happened but the memory and the popular perception of it is that Tanushree Dutta spoke up against harassment and then she was no more."

The alleged incident took place on the shoot of a special number for Horn Ok Pleassss due to which she opted out of the appearance and was replaced by Rakhi Sawant.