20 October,2018 07:20 AM IST | Mumbai | Anamika Gharat
mid-day's October 16 story on four women accusing Anirban Das Blah of sexual harassment
Bollywood talent manager Anirban Das Blah, who has been accused of sexual harassment by several women through this paper, claimed he was about to jump off Vashi bridge but was spotted by the traffic police in the nick of time at midnight. Blah had sent a note to a newspaper hours before going to the bridge. The newspaper had then alerted the cops.
After many Bollywood celebrities were publicly named and shamed for sexual misconduct and molestation, four women accused Blah of sexual harassment. During police counselling, he told the cops that he had become depressed after losing his job and, hence, wanted to jump off the bridge. Traffic police officers happened to be on the spot on patrol duty for the last day of Navratri.
In the nick of time
According to the traffic police, all officers were present in the area for bandobast when Senior Police Inspector Satish Gaikwad got a call about a man trying to jump off the bridge. He immediately arrived with his team.
The Navi Mumbai police said Blah had booked a cab and reached Vashi creek around midnight. Gaikwad said, "We got a call from the control room about a man moving suspiciously on the old Vashi bridge. We were told that he was wearing decent clothes but appeared depressed. When I reached there with my team, he saw the police car and stood up on the bar of the bridge. I went closer, asked him to get down and assured him help for his problems. I kept up a flow of reassuring words, and eventually, he sat down on the bar for a while and then quietly came with us. We took him to Vashi police station." At Vashi police station, he requested that no action be taken against him.
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The allegations
An actress has shared her two-year-old ordeal about how Blah bumped into her at a meeting and asked her if she was interested in an unnatural sex set-up, while a model has revealed Blah asked her to strip when she'd gone to his house for a professional meeting. After the accounts went viral, he was asked to step down as co-founder of talent management agency KWAN.
'This isn't revenge for you. This is justice'
An excerpt from Blah's suicide note, "Without trying to justify any of my actions, I just want to say that I have tried to be the best person I can be. I didn't have the strength to cope with what happened to me as a child in a healthy way. I never was able to separate sex from power, to make it a part of love, and somewhere along the way one part of me turned into a monster. Maybe ... I am bipolar. Because I know how much love I have to give...But unfortunately the monster inside me keeps resurfacing...To anyone I may have hurt, I am sorry. This isn't revenge for you. This is justice."
Also Read: #MeToo: KWAN Founder Anirban Das Blah Tries To Commit Suicide
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