Raghu: I regret the episode

For the first time after Roadies 5.0, the show's creator speaks about the finale fracas

For the finale episode of MTV's hit show Roadies 5.0, the task given to the two finalists, Nihal Nikam and Aashutosh Kaushik was to convince a members of their team to perform five tasks Kiss an iguana, pierce your nipples, get your head shaved and get slapped by the leader of the opposite team.

Slap stunner

All the tasks were performed successfully by both teams, except Aashutosh's slap on Shambhavi's face.

Neither the crew nor the contestants expected him to go ahead with it. Everyone assumed he'd just slap her lightly or mock slap her. But the Roadies finalist, who is twice the size of the petite Shambhavi, slammed his palm onto her cheek with full force, leaving everyone on the sets shocked into silence. They all were too stunned to react. All except Raghu Ram, who was furious.

Says an insider from the show, "He wanted to beat up Ashu, and had to be physically held back."

Returning the favour

AVP, Shows-MTV, Raghu Ram admits he still hasn't quite gotten over the incident, "That was really bad. I regret that episode. We were all taken aback when it happened. We allowed the finalists to pick their teams for their final task and then interchanged the teams. The idea was to give them team members who would not be willing to do anything for them, and therefore make things difficult for them. But the contestants agreed to do the tasks. When Rannvijay and I heard Shambhavi volunteer, we were hoping she'd back out but she didn't. We stopped the shoot and discussed if we should discourage her, or tell Ashu to go easy on the girl but we didn't want Nihal to feel we were being partial. We make it a point to never interfere or even bring our likes and dislikes on the show. Still, after the person from Nihal's team got the first slap, Rannvijay made a comment to discourage Shambhavi but she still went ahead."

Raghu continues, "After he slapped her, we wanted to beat him up. The crew lambasted him. In fact he didn't enjoy the after-party in Malaysia. He spent it in isolation. He wanted to go home as no one wanted to talk to him. He later apologised to her. And we gave Shambhavi the chance to slap him and Nihal."

The incident is more disturbing to Rannvijay and Ram because they both represent an NGO called fight-back, which is against crimes against women. "So you can imagine how shitty we felt about the entire thing," concludes Raghu.

Log on to the website www.fight-back.net

About fight-back

In recent times, India has been experiencing a spike in gender-related crimes. Most of these incidents spark off a fixed pattern of responses in people. An event takes place, the media responds, the state machinery responds, an NGO takes up the issue for a while, a certain threshold of public reaction is created and then the whole issue slowly fades out. People refuse to engage, debate, congregate and act collectively on issues that affect them. fight-back is a movement that will function as a disruptive influence in this pattern and hopefully create a new cycle of action.