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A case has been filed against Arunabh Kumar, founder of The Viral Fever, for alleged molestation after a woman finally came forward to file a complaint against him. The 34-year-old IIT graduate has been accused of sexual harassment by at least five women, but none of them had filed a complaint against him.
The suburban Andheri police registered a case against Kumar under sections 354 A (causing sexual harassment) and 509 (insult the modesty of a woman by indecent words, gesture or acts) of Indian Penal Code, said DCP Ashwini Sanap, police spokesperson.
Kumar hadn’t been arrested, he said, without disclosing on whose complaint the FIR was registered.
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On March 12th, a blog post by a former employee of TVF, who chose to call herself the Indian Fowler, accused Kumar of sexual harrasement. The post instantly went viral, and while both TVF and Kumar denied the allegations, more women spoke out accusing Kumar of sexually harassing them.
Supreme Court Lawyer Rizwan Siddique had filed a third party complaint against Kumar and the police had asked Kumar to record his statement on the matter. No FIR was filed against him as the complaints were from anonymous women. Both Police and Siddiqui (through his Facebook post) urged the victims to come out and speak.
TVF’s casting director Nidhi Bisht had also urged women to speak out. “Come forward without fear and lodge a formal complaint,”Nidhi wrote for those who had faced similar ill-treatment at the TVF workplace. Bisht, who had earlier dismissed the allegations against Kumar as baseless, admitted that she was shocked by the number of women speaking out against the TVF chief since Indian Fowler’s post went viral on social media.
The TVF, founded in 2011, runs a YouTube Channel, produces popular web series Permanent Roommates, Pitchers and also owns the women-centric YouTube channel Girliyapa. As the allegations against its founder evoked widespread outrage, the company said it should have “handled its response better”.
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