After a host of celebrities incudling his partners backed Anurag Kashyap amid sexual assault allegations, filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma has also come out in support of the Dev D director. The Satya director has said that he knows Anurag for two decades and never witnessed or heard about him hurting anyone.“The @anuragkashyap72 i know is a highly sensitive and emotional person and I never ever saw or heard about him hurting anyone in all of the 20 years that I have known him ..So I frankly can’t picture what’s happening now,” he wrote on Twitter. Payal claimed that when she met Anurag professionally, during the making of Bombay Velvet, he misbehaved with her. He has denied the allegations and called them baseless. His lawyer, Priyanka Khimani, issued a statement saying, “My client, Anurag Kashyap, has been deeply pained by the false allegations of sexual misconduct that have recently surfaced against him. These allegations are completely false, malicious and dishonest. ”The statement said that in this case, the Me Too movement was ‘reduced to a mere tool for character assassination’, and that Anurag intends to take legal action.
Several Bollywood celebrities came out in support of Anurag, including actors Taapsee Pannu, Tisca Chopra, Surveen Chawla, and Anjana Sukhani. His ex-wives, film editor Aarti Bajaj and actor Kalki Koechlin, also stood up for him. In her note, Aarti wrote that Anurag always empowers women and creates a safe place for them. “Cheapest stunt I have seen till now. First it made me angry then I laughed so hard as it cannot come more framed than this . I am sorry that you have to go through this .That’s the level of them,” she wrote in an Instagram. Payal Ghosh accused Anurag Kashyap of sexually harassing her back in 2014 and treating her badly at his residence. After she shared her post on social media, she was backed by Kangana Ranaut. The ‘Queen’ actress also shared her experience in Bollywood on her Twitter handle and called the #MeToo movement in Bollywood, a failure.