Vikramaditya Motwane opens up on Twitter on the #MeToo controversy and his erstwhile producer-partner
MUMBAI MIRROR (October 8, 2018)

I didn’t hear about the incident between Vikas and the girl when it happened in 2015. The first time I heard of it was in March 2017, when Anurag called me and told me about it. Madhu (Mantena), me and Anurag sat with the girl and she told us the whole story, in the same detail as in the article. It was hard to hear and it horrified us.

We immediately began to take action. We offered suspending Vikas from the company for a long period of time, not letting him produce or direct, taking away his signatory rights as well as sending him to rehabilitation. She agreed. So did Vikas, who had no memory of the incident. We also worked towards formalising this and even taking steps towards documenting these terms.

However, I was informed by Anurag that the girl was unwilling to pursue this matter any further because her boyfriend didn’t want her to make her name public.

Anurag and Shubhra (Shetty) tried very hard to convince her not to back away but the boyfriend was firm. He said that “they will find their own method to make Vikas pay”. (All of the above is something that Anurag and Shubhra told the writer of the article but it’s not in there.)

Of all the various remedies offered then to the girl and us, which included suspending him (Vikas) from the office, stripping him of any signing authority and not allowing him to produce films — we did all of it.

For those of you accusing me of being complicit, creating a boys club, and protecting Vikas — I was silent in the press because I felt I was trying to make things right in a manner that, at all times, sought to protect the identity of the girl in question, without assigning any doubt whatsoever to her version of what had transpired, and most importantly, on terms that she wanted and expressly agreed to then.

I’m truly sorry about what happened to the girl. Vikas Bahl is a sexual offender. He’s preyed on a young woman, abused her trust, ruined her life. The scars are going to stay and that just isn’t right.

The only thing I can offer now is an apology. And the only thing I can say is that this will never happen again on my watch.