Actress who helped trigger India’s #MeToo movement was ‘inspired by God’
When Tanushree Dutta accused a prominent actor of harassing her on a film set in 2008, she was intimidated, threatened with legal action and her career ground to a halt. Ten years later, her comments about #MeToo led to a raft of accusations of sexual misconduct
The Bollywood actress who helped trigger the #MeToo movement in India challenging sexual harassment and abuse sees it as part of her religious education after an experience 10 years ago she said effectively ended her career.
“I feel God used me to start something which had to happen,” says Tanushree Dutta. “All these women had this buried deep in their hearts out of shame.”
Dutta, who said she was inspired by Christianity, Buddhism, yoga and the #MeToo movement in the United States, said last month that prominent actor Nana Patekar had sexually harassed her on the set of a film in 2008.
Patekar has denied wrongdoing.
Dutta said Patekar, 67, had demanded she do intimate dance steps with him in one song in the Hindi-language romantic comedy Horn OK Pleassss. When she refused, she said, members of a far right-wing Hindu group attacked her car while she was in it, including jumping on the roof and trying to smash the windscreen.