Vikas Bahl comes out Whitewashed from Sexual Assault allegations; Here's how...

Read on for an insider to Vikas Bahl’s escape from sexual assault allegations...

Vikas Bahl

Back in 2018, Bollywood director Vikas Bahl was accused of sexual misconduct during the promotional tour of Bombay Velvet in 2015. Later, the controversy stirred his career as he had to step down from Super 30 and Phantom films was dissolved due to the on-going case. However, after months of investigation, the Queen director has been given a clean chit by the internal inquiry committee of Reliance Entertainment.

Recently, it was announced that Vikas Bahl was reinstated as director and was cleared by an Internal Complaints Committee. 

The reports from HuffingtonPost’s investigation suggest an Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) that was set up to examine the allegations of sexual assault against Bollywood director Vikas Bahl, cleared him without following established procedures and even interviewing the witnesses.

The committee’s report also mentioned that ICC inquired into the allegations on Bahl's request in March 12, 2019. He himself wrote to Phantom films in order for him to offer an opportunity to clear his name. But, even while the committee was asked to be set up by the director himself, the company rammed through the inquiry without sharing all possible information with the survivor. 

The company informed him that the PoSH Act has no provision for a company to initiate an inquiry on its own initiative, without a formal complaint. At this point, the complainant was neither an employee at Phantom Films (she had resigned in January 2017), nor had she asked for an ICC to be set up.

“The Act doesn’t permit the ICC of a company to take suo moto notice,” said Sood, the lawyer. “They can’t force the woman to complain. They have to respect her autonomy and not pursue the case if she doesn’t wish for them too.”

Hrithik Roshan and Vikas Bahl

The committee was seated before the release of Super 30 and the charges levied upon Vikas Bahl have been lifted. The investigation also claimed that the panel was headed by Vikramaditya Motwane's mother Dipa Motwane. What's even more jarring is that the committee members did not ask two other women to depose, even though their testimonies against Bahl had been submitted in a sealed envelope, in a defamation case filed by him in a Mumbai court.

The Supreme Court advocate Mihir Sood said, "The Prevention of Sexual Harassment (PoSH) act didn't envisage many of the scenarios that #MeToo has thrown up, so a lot of the investigations and inquiries being done as a result of #MeToo are outside the framework of PoSH.”

The treatment of the case emphasizes the lack of clarity regarding the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace, (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, known as the PoSH act.

According to the PoSH Act, Chapter 3, Section 6 (1), Every District Officer shall constitute in the district concerned, a committee to be known as the “Local Complaints Committee” to receive complaints of sexual harassment: from establishments where the Internal Complaints Committee has not been constituted due to having less than ten workers or if the complaint is against the employer himself.  

The investigation also mentioned that there was no ICC set by Phantom films. Also, the founder members did not come out even in October 2018, even while the MeToo movement was at a peak in India.

The woman said, "The manner in which they were handling the situation, and that too after four years, was something that left me unsettled."

She also added, "So I was not surprised by the outcome. However, that doesn't change my truth. He knows what he did and he will have to live with it."

Later, on March 19, 2019, the survivor received a mail from Persis Hodiwala, a lawyer at Phantom Films Pvt. Ltd, asking her if she would like to file a formal complaint against Bahl.

Answering to Hodiwala’s mail, the woman in a statement said that, her email and the reports from HuffPost India should be treated as her formal complaint and that she’d prefer not to be present at the meetings.

In a reply to the answering mail sent by the survivor, Hodiwala in his reply accepted HuffPost India’s reports as a formal written complaint, but asked the woman for supporting documents, names of witnesses, their addresses and phone numbers.

Hodiwala also mentioned if she failed to attend three consecutive meetings set up by the committee, they will terminate the process of inquiry and close the complaint.

Vikas Bahl

Finding the Loophole!

The investigation suggests, there is no specific procedure when a senior is accused, but ethically it should be forwarded to the Local Complaints’ Committee for an unbiased investigation. Bahl himself appears aware that the matter should have been probed by a neutral local complaints committee, rather than Phantom Films.

In paragraph 35 of his defamation suit filed in a Mumbai court in 2018, Bahl said, “the alleged victim failed to file any complaint against the plaintiff before the Local Complaints Committee under the provisions of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013.”

In his defamation case, Bahl said Kashyap, Motwane, and Mantena had taken advantage of the fact that no complaint was filed at a Local Complaints Committee, to speak out against him. Now, months later, Bahl himself had asked Phantom Films to set up an inquiry, while knowing that Phantom Films did not have the appropriate mandate for this inquiry.

Not to forget that the committee was headed by Dipa Motwane — the mother of Bahl’s business partner Vikramaditya Motwane, and included Persis Hodiwala, who was an employee of Phantom.

“Right from the outset, I didn’t quite trust the ICC to be wholly independent,” the woman told HuffPost India. Her fears, she said, were justified, when the committee began its investigation.

The ICC didn’t interview witnesses who could have corroborated the woman’s testimony. Had it so chosen, the ICC could have called upon a number of people to depose.

Divya Taneja, Vishakha Kinjawadekar and Vikramaditya Motwane and Anurag Kashyap were the other people interviewed.

On May 31st, the Committee concluded, “On careful consideration of all the facts and the circumstances of the present case, the Internal Committee has come to the conclusion that the complainant had failed to substantiate her allegations leveled against the respondent in the news article published in the Huffington Post and accordingly complaint is disposed off completely. Under the circumstances, the complaint is disposed of without any further recommendations.”

“It all boils down to the intent of the committee. Whether they want to actually address the problem, or give this person a clean chit so his film can release without any hassle and more people from the industry can work with him on the basis of this so-called inquiry,” said an industry insider who works for a major studio.

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