Singers Neha Bhasin, Sona Mahapatra and Shweta Pandit have come out against Sony Television’s move to reinstate Bollywood music composer Anu Malik, against whom there were multiple #MeToo allegations last year, as a judge on their reality show Indian Idol. In a series of tweets, the singers spoke about Malik’s predatory nature, and slammed the television industry for facilitating sexual harassers.
Neha Bhasin, in a tweet posted on October 30, accused Anu Malik of sexually harassing her fifteen years ago, when she was 21. “We do live in a very sexist world. Anu Malik is a predator. I too have run away from his strange moves when I was 21. I didn’t let myself get into a sticky situation beyond him lying on a sofa in front of me talking about my eyes in a studio. I fled lying,” wrote Bhasin on Twitter. “I fled lying my mum’s waiting below. He even messaged and called me after that to which I stopped responding. The point is I went to give him my CD and hoped for a chance at a song. He was older and shouldn’t have behaved the way he did.”