Kangana Ranaut accuses Vikas Bahl of sexual harassment

Kangana Ranaut has extended support to a former employee of Phantom Films who has accused Super 30 director Vikas Bahl of molestation, saying the director had harassed her on the sets of Queen as well. In an interview to India Today, the actor who won a National Award for her performance in Queen, said, “Every time we met, socially greeted and hugged each other, he (Bahl) would 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’.”

The 31-year-old actor said she could tell on the sets of the 2014 film that “something is wrong with him.” Kangana Ranaut added in the interview, “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.”

A Huffington Post report detailed the abuse of a former employee of the company founded by Anurag Kashyap, Madhu Mantena and Vikramaditya Motwane at the hands of Vikas, who is also a co-founder, in 2015. The report claims that while many people, including Anurag, were aware of the incident for a long time, they did not do enough. Anurag accepted in an interview to the website that “we didn’t handle it well”. Bahl is yet to respond to the report.