Tanushree Dutta-Nana Patekar fiasco: Eyewitness recounts harassment incident

After Bollywood actress Tanushree Dutta came forth with shocking allegations of sexual harassment levelled against famed actor Nana Patekar, the Hindi film industry has gone into a state of immense frenzy.

On Tuesday in an interview with an Indian publication., the ‘Aashiq Banaya starlet’ recounted the harrowing experience of working with Nana while she was filming for a dance sequence for a movie released in 2008, saying he touched and felt her inappropriately and pushed her around the sets forcibly. 

Shortly after, journalist Janice Sequeira who was present on the sets reportedly took to social media to share her version of the disdainful incident that took place almost ten years ago.

In a series of tweets Janice wrote:

“Some incidents that take place even a decade ago remain fresh in your memory. What happened with #TanushreeDutta on the sets of “Horn Ok Please” is one such incident - I was there,” she wrote in her opening tweet. Janice wrote that she was on the sets to cover the behind-the-scenes aspect of the song. When she arrived on sets, she was told the shooting has been stalled because of Tanushree.

“I could see Tanushree on set, visibly upset about something. #NanaPatekar, choreographer Ganesh Acharya and a man (who I later found was the producer) were having a conversation, while 50-odd dancers sat waiting. The official version was that the “heroine was not cooperating”. A while later, shooting resumed. Tanushree resumed work, and a couple shots later, #NanaPatekar joined her. Not long after that, Tanushree walked off set. Shooting halted again. She locked herself in her vanity van, refusing to come out. Out of nowhere, goons turned up and began banging against the vanity van door. I was told the producers had called them to set. Cops arrived. Amidst this chaos, I got hold of #NanaPatekar. All he said was, “Meri beti jaisi hai” (she is like my daughter), which didn’t really make any sense at that point.

“Eventually, Tanushree’s parents arrived to pick her up. Her car was attacked, the windshield broken. I tried to get in touch with Tanushree to get her version of events. Around midnight, she asked me to come to her place. In tears, she narrated what really happened,” she wrote. Tanushree told Janice that choreographer Ganesh Acharya made her practise her dance steps for three days only to change it all on the day of the shoot so Nana could be a part of the sequence. “Later, she said, a lewd dance step was introduced on the insistence of #NanaPatekar, so he could touch her inappropriately. That’s where alarm bells rang, and Tanushree decided to walk off set. What she didn’t expect was the aggression shown by the producers after,” she wrote in her tweets.

On the other, choreographer Ganesh Acharya has dismissed these allegations saying Nana Patekar is a ‘sweet person’.

“He’s a very sweet person, he can never do that. He is very helpful and he has actually helped a lot of artistes in the industry, he can never do anything like that.” He also added that he doesn’t remember what happened that day as the incident is from 10 years ago. “When I was called for rehearsal I was told that Nana ji was also there in the song. I don’t have the agreement with me because that time we used to do it verbally. But that particular song didn’t involve any kind of indecent step in the first place. It was pure dancing. That’s all,” he said.