BOMBAY TIMES (October 8, 2018)

In April 2017, Mumbai Mirror had reported that a woman employee of Phantom Films had accused co-founder and director Vikas Bahl of sexual harassment, a charge Bahl had vehemently denied at the time. The report also hinted that there were multiple victims and quoted one of the stakeholders as saying that Bahl was prone to “bad behaviour”. Now, the woman has revealed more details about the incident to HuffPost India, alleging that Bahl sexually assaulted her during a trip to Goa in 2015, on the promotional tour of Bombay Velvet. She has also stated that she told the other partners at Phantom – Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane and Madhu Mantena – about the incident a few months later, but nothing was done about it till March 2017; and that Bahl continued to harass her till she finally quit the company.

After her detailed account of the assault and Phantom’s failure to address it, on Saturday, Kashyap announced that the production house was being dissolved, only tweeting that “Phantom was a dream, a glorious one and all dreams come to an end . We did our best and we succeeded and we failed. But I know for sure we will come out of this stronger, wiser and will continue to pursue our dreams our own individual ways.”

Now, Kangana Ranaut, whom Bahl directed in the 2014 film Queen, has also lent her weight to the allegations, giving details about Bahl’s conduct towards her, and has said she could “tell something is wrong with him”. In a statement, the actress said, “Totally believe her. Even though Vikas was married back in 2014 when we were filming Queen, he bragged about having casual sex with a new partner every other day. I don’t judge people and their marriages but you can tell when addiction becomes sickness. He partied every night and shamed me for sleeping early and not being cool enough. I often told him off. He was scared of me but still every time we met socially greeted and hugged each other, he’d bury his face in my neck, hold me really tight and breathe in the smell of my hair. It took me great amount of strength and effort to pull myself out of his embrace. He’d say, ‘I love how you smell K’. I could tell something is wrong with him.”

Kangana has also said that she lost out on a role after she supported the survivor at the time her accusations came to light, and also slammed those who are “finding the courage to attack him now”. She says, “I believe this girl, but what is sad is that now that Phantom has dissolved many are attacking him, even though the girl asked for help long ago. That time the story was conveniently killed, but I supported her at that time as well. You can see my media interaction during one of my brand endorsement interactions, I thought the movement would catch up, but I was wrong. At that time, Vikas had come to me with a script about a gold medallist from Haryana. When I supported the girl, he stopped talking to me. I didn’t mind losing out on a good script and I never called him either. I was determined to say what I felt was right. But the matter was pushed under the carpet and I didn’t hear any updates about the same. It’s amusing after the news of Phantom’s dissolution (that) many are finding the courage to attack him. Shame on such a society. Go look at yourselves in the mirror, bunch of cowards, attacking powerless men won’t begin a movement. Either we do it or we don’t. Let’s not be opportunists. If we are a shit society let’s accept (it). At least have that much honesty within yourself. Selective outrage will only serve as entertainment. This will just be tabloid gossip and nothing else.”

With inputs from Lasyapriya Sundaram, Rachana Dubey
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In December 2012, when Queen was being shot in Delhi and the capital was coming to terms with the Nirbhaya gang-rape, which had happened a few days before, the crew of the film decided to wear black to protest the incident. At the time, Vikas Bahl had said, “We were wondering what we could do to keep up the momentum of the protests. We thought, if we can’t stop work we can at least wear black for a day and put it out there. The sad part is that the solution – actually offered as a solution – here is that girls should stay at home and they won’t get raped. That’s not the direction this should go in. Girls should be able to go out at 2am, that’s the point.” During the protest, the director was also chanting, “Kill the bastards or castrate them.”