Indian actress Swara Bhasker recounts sexual harassment incident

MUMBAI: Bollywood's charming actress Swara Bhasker on Friday revealed that she was 'sexually harassed by a director', but it took her years to realise what exactly had happened, reports Indian media. 

Without naming anyone, Swara said that the 'harassment' occurred  at workplace and the director was being "predatory." 

Swara, during the sidelines of an event, was reported to have said: "It took me six to eight years to realise when I heard someone else talk about their experience of harassment at a panel discussion like this. I was like God, what happened to me three years ago was actually sexual harassment at workplace! I never realised it because like you said, I escaped. Because the person did not touch me and I managed to ward it off."

"I would just tell myself that this director is being... whatever, but that is not the full truth. The director was not being an idiot or... he was being a predator," she added.

The Veere Di Wedding actress  told Mumbai Mirror, "He stalked me during the day and called me through the night. I was asked to go to his hotel room on the pretext of discussing the scene and would find him drinking. During the first week itself, he started talking about love and sex and one night, arrived in my room, drunk, and asked to be hugged. It was scary."

She was also reported to have said that she wasn't able to recognise the pattern of harassment  because "as part of our culture a girl child is not taught to sense a predatory behaviour for what it is."

"In India,  culture of silence prevails around the issue of sexual harassment, actually everywhere around the world that we are just going through are lives without recognising it properly. We just recognise the discomfort," Swara said.

Many stars from Indian film industry, including actress Tanushree Dutta, have opened up about their #MeToo accounts, in which some of the top artistes have been named and shamed. Swara Bhasker was among the first celebrities to have voiced her support in favour of Tanushree Dutta.

Swara Bhasker was last seen in Veere Di Wedding, for which she was  extremely trolled for a masturbation scene she featured in. She currently features in the web series "It's Not That Simple."