You can call me lik. And yeah, after I wrote this I read through the Episode Discussion Thread, which made it clear Sandhya doesn't know about it.
I have no issues with anything he did other than
showing the contestants the hug.
Because all the implications were not that it was simply he was rooting for her, and was giving her tips. I agree that that's what he was doing. But when showing them the hug, plenty of them thought in their heads that something was going on. The way the other girls looked at her. The way all of them looked at her.
I don't know whether he hugged her for calming her down or for purely his own reasonings. She was naturally scared once he pinned her, and even as he said ' if you hesitate' as she was still pinned. I can buy that he hugged her for calming her down.
But showing that hug to the other contestants, yes I get that it achieved what he wanted. But still...as I said, I can justify everything else. But doing something like that purposely... that's a girl's reputation fallen in the eyes of those other contestants. Now granted, Karishma may have started a rumor anyway after a while. But that's different than purposely putting it out there.
Unless you are telling me that they all just viewed that hug as nothing more than him giving her special treatment and rooting for her to win, rather than viewing it as her carrying on with DC in some way or the other.
But either way, I can buy that fame costs these things. If the writers had guts, I wouldn't mind Meenaxi understanding everything was done to make her stronger, while taking the greatest offence in his perpetuation that she was having some kind of illicit relationship. But then she herself acknowledge, you know what...that's this murky entertainment world, and that's the price of fame. Still wouldn't excuse DC for placing that perpetuation, but it would be a harsh blow for him to see that this girl to become more 'real' from the wide eyed innocent, seedhi-sadhi ladki she was.
Instead of her lashing out at him, her acceptance would cut deeper.