A day after Phantom Films dissolved amidst stunning allegations that one of its founder, Vikas Bahl, had sexually assaulted a junior female employee of the company, Kangana Ranaut has claimed that she was aware of Bahl’s addiction for sex.
The Queen actor said that Bahl behaved inappropriately with her during a trip to Goa. Kangana said that she had believed the woman when she was sexually attacked by Bahl but hoped that the movement will catch up. Saying that she had supported Bahl’s alleged victim, Kangana said that Bahl denied her a role in his next project, which was about a Gold medalist athlete from Haryana, because of her support to the woman.
She was quoted by PTI, “(I) Totally believe her, even though Vikas was married back in 2014 when we were filming Queen, he bragged about having casual sex with a new partner every other day. I don’t judge people and their marriages but you can tell when addiction becomes sickness.”
The actor said that she was “shamed” for not being cool enough by the director, who, Kangana says, was scared of her.
“But still every time we met, socially greeted and hugged each other, he’d bury his face in my neck, hold me really tight and breathe in the smell of my hair. It took me great amount of strength and effort to pull myself out of his embrace. He’d say ‘I love how you smell K’. I could tell something is wrong with him,” she added.
On Saturday, filmmakers Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane, Madhu Mantena and Vikas Bahl decided to dissolve their production company Phantom Films. Some of the high profile films made by Phantom films are Kangana Ranaut’s Queen, Vicky Kaushal’s Masaan, Sonakshi Sinha and Ranveer Singh’s Lootera and Shahid Kapoor’s Udta Punjab.
Kashyap too said that he was aware of the woman’s allegations, but did not do anything about it. He told Huffpost, “Whatever happened was wrong. We didn’t handle it well, we failed. I cannot blame anyone but myself,” Kashyap said. He added, “But now we are determined to do better. We believe her completely. She has our undying support. What Bahl has done is horrifying. We are already on our path of course correction and will do everything in our capacity to fix it.”
