Adwaita Das in a still from the video
A session at the ongoing Mumbai Shorts International Festival festival took an unexpected turn after a 31-year-old female filmmaker publicly accused the man who was handing her an award of having sexually harassed her at the Film and Television Institute of India seven years ago. The filmmaker, Adwaita Das, was receiving the award for Best Editing for short film Dr Mandela Kaise Pagal Hua from Nilanjan Dutta, an associate professor of editing at FTII.
In a video, posted by Ms Das on YouTube, she tells the audience at the festival that Nilanjan Dutta allegedly used her 'to sexually manipulate people.' She says, "Here I am standing with Nilanjan Dutta who was the person who told me and a batchmate to sexually manipulate people so that they can come to the ragging session and to sexually take favours. It's been a long time, it has been seven years and I have really tried to put it behind me. I needed to speak up today and I would love to hear it from you that you would not do this again to any student or any woman ever again."
Mr Dutta appears to explain away Ms Das' charge saying, "It's interesting that you opened up. I am still a faculty at FTII. See the times are changing and when you teach cinema, unfortunately there is an element of sexuality in it. There was a big misunderstanding and I did apologize."
Adwaita Das accuses the professor of 'using cinema to get away with this.' "There was no apology, there was no discussion on cinema. he was drunk along with two other guys. We were made to sit in front of them and listen to them say that 'sexually manipulate them take their favours to rag people,'" she says.
Delhi reportedly leads the list of places recording complaints of sexual harassment at educational institutions. In July, the University Grants Commission (UGC) requested all higher educational institutions to submit an annual return on cases of sexual harassment for the period 2014 to 2015.
With Inputs from IANS