Vikramaditya Motwane apologises for inaction in Vikas Bahl sexual harassment case

Filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane Sunday broke his silence over the controversy involving his Phantom Films partner Vikas Bahl, who has been accused of sexual harassment.

In a recent article in HuffPost India, a former woman employee of the now dissolved production banner has reiterated the allegations and shared further details about the incident in May 2015.

According to the report, the woman said she had reached out to filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, on of the partners of the production house, and detailed her experience, but no action was taken while Bahl continued to harass her until she finally quit the company.

In a statement on Twitter, Motwane, who formed the company along with Kashyap, Bahl and Madhu Mantena, apologised for the incident and said he will ensure a safer working environment on the sets of his films.

"I'm truly sorry about what happened to the girl. Vikas Bahl is a sexual offender. He's preyed on a young woman, abused her trust, ruined her life. The scars are going to stay and that just isn't right.

"The only thing I can offer now is an apology. And the only thing I can say is that this will never happen again on my watch," he wrote in the statement.

Motwane, whose films "Lootera", "Trapped" and "Bhavesh Joshi" have all been made under the banner, said he was unaware about the incident until March 2017.

"I didn't hear about the incident between Vikas and the girl
"For those of you accusing me of being complicit, creating a boys club, and protecting Vikas - I was silent in the press because I felt I was trying to make things right in a manner that, at all times, sought to protect the identity of the girl in question, without assigning any doubt whatsoever to her version of what had transpired, and most importantly, on terms that she wanted and expressly agreed to then."