Bollywood filmmaker Anurag Kashyap has now stepped down as a board member of Mumbai Film Festival in the wake of allegations on former partner Vikas Bahl. The Queen director was called out by an ex-employee of Phantom for sexually harassing her on the promotional tour of Bombay Velvet in 2015. Four days, earlier the director had dissolved his production house Phantom films.
Announcing his decision, he tweeted on Wednesday morning, “In the light of the current events, I have decided to step back from my duties as a board member from MAMI until the shadow of doubt of our alleged complicitness in silence and not doing anything about it, is cleared'.
He, in a series of tweets, has apologized . He wrote, "I feel like just apologizing for being a man. I use to feel I have come a long way from growing up in a smalltown &today I feel like somehow I am still there. There is so much I really don’t see & also see others around me pretending to see & I feel , inko bhi kahan dikhta hai."
Meanwhile, Vikas Bahl has sent legal notices to Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane calling them "opportunists" for making him look like the fall guy. In the notice, Bahl has alleged that Kashyap and Motwane acted on hearsay to portray him as a villain.