Anurag Kashyap steps down as MAMI board member
Mumbai, Oct 10 : Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap Wednesday said he has decided to step down as the board member of Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image (MAMI).
The 46-year-old director has been a member of the MAMI board ever since it was set up.
Kashyap, who has been accused of shielding director Vikas Bahl in an alleged sexual harassment case, said he will come back only after clearing his name.
"In the light of the current events, I have decided to step back from my duties as a board member from MAMI until the shadow of doubt of our alleged complicitness in silence and not doing anything about it, is cleared," he tweeted.
Last year, a woman employee at Phantom Films, which had Bahl as one of the partners along side Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane and Madhu Mantena, had alleged that Bahl behaved inappropriately with her during a trip to Goa in 2015.
In another tweet, Kashyap denied that he remained in the case and said that he will keep on fighting the "accusations" that come his way.
"The accused was named and shamed a long time back. For people who don't read the details & only the headlines, I have no response. A lot of women work with me and have been around, I am answerable to them & they stand witness to our actions &our struggle to do the right thing," he said.
"Let the purging continue .. it's as good a time as any for all of us to introspect, look into ourselves and see how we all have been complicit in so much, with our silence, forced by fear of consequence or by choice," he added.
The filmmaker, however, said he has begun to question himself about the interactions he had with opposite sex for a while now.
"And my greatest and simplest learning is that the line of consent is not just defined by 'No', most times it's before that 'No' is uttered. And the line of consent depends on the person that owns the consent. It varies from person to person.
"It's our conditioning, even for the most woke people. Most of us are still learning, everyone who claims to know what it means, and I talk about us men, we really don't know. None of us knows. It can't and should not be defined so simply," he wrote.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
Baramati plane crash: Rohit Pawar alleges attempts to shield VSR Ventures
Mumbai (PTI): NCP (SP) MLA Rohit Pawar on Wednesday alleged that someone was trying to save VSR Ventures in connection with the plane crash that killed Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar, and claimed that the AAIB preliminary probe vindicated the doubts earlier raised by him.
He also accused VSR company of indulging in several grave lapses in the past.
The Learjet 45 aircraft, operated by VSR Ventures, crashed near the Baramati air strip in Pune district on January 28, killing Pawar and four others.
In its 22-page preliminary report on the VSR Venture's Learjet plane crash, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) said the visibility at the time of the crash was below the required level. It also flagged about fading marks on the runway and presence of loose gravels on the runway surface.
Pawar said, "I am not against VSR or the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Ajitdada was travelling in a VSR aircraft. Unless we go into the depth of every aspect, we will not know the truth. But someone is trying to save this company. The doubts we had raised have been proven correct in the inquiry report."
He also claimed that the AAIB report contained discrepancies, including mentioning Baramati as a district, and questioned how seriously the probe had been conducted.
Pawar, who has been regularly holding press conferences to raise issues concerning the Baramati plane crash, also contested the report's conclusion that the aircraft hit trees before crashing.
"The report says the aircraft struck trees and then fell. But there are no trees at that spot. There is only a small bush which the aircraft did not even touch. What is stated in the report about hitting trees is incorrect," he said.
Pawar further alleged that VSR Ventures had displayed irresponsibility on multiple occasions, citing an incident involving the then chief minister Eknath Shinde's Davos visit on January 20, 2023.
He claimed that the aircraft carrying Shinde had entered Iranian and Iraqi airspace without overflight permission, following which fighter jets from the two countries allegedly warned of action, forcing a change in route from Bahrain to Zurich.
"There have been several such grave lapses by VSR," he said.
Pawar demanded to know from where VSR Ventures derived its "audacity", and sought details about its investors and officials, though he added that he was not personally concerned with who they were.
Drawing a comparison, he said the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had taken over the probe into actor Sushant Singh Rajput's death within two days, whereas a month had passed since the Baramati crash without a similar action.
He claimed that VSR Ventures had two directors and three shareholders, and that there were eight common names across two related companies.
He further alleged that the owner of VSR was related to the Union Civil Aviation Minister and questioned why the company, though registered in Delhi, had made high-value investments in Jubilee Hills (upscale area in Hyderabad) at rates allegedly Rs 17 crore above the market price.
The MLA representing the Karjat-Jamkhed assembly constituency in Ahilyanagar district also raised concerns about the legal and institutional framework of the AAIB under the 2017 rules, claiming it was neither a statutory nor an autonomous body and remained answerable to the secretary and the minister, besides being attached to the DGCA.
"There is no independent investigative agency," he alleged.
