Anyone who consumes short format content was in awe of the The Viral Fever. The success of 'Pitchers and Permanent Roommates', a hugely popular web series, took it a notch higher.
However, the success story took a different path early this week. The content creation group went through a huge setback when an anonymous blogger on blogging site medium.com allegedly accused the TVF founder and CEO Arunabh Kumar of molestation. Soon, many more women, some with their identities revealed and some anonymous, joined in to make the charge stronger.
The TVF team mostly maintained silence throughout, except for an instant social media response that has been widely criticised and an interview in a Mumbai tabloid where Kumar "unconditionally and unequivocally" denied all the allegations. "Social media has already declared me an offender, but I am ready to address all the allegations against me. I am open to receiving a police complaint so that I can respond legally as well. TVF is bigger than me and if there is a remote chance that I have done any wrong, let me be persecuted," he had said.
On Thursday, activist-lawyer Rizwan Siddiqui filed a third-party complaint against Kumar. "I have filed a complaint. The complaint would translate into FIR hopefully by tomorrow (Friday). I have filed the complaint with the women's commission as well," Siddiqui told news agency, IANS.
However, on Friday morning, the TVF team came out with a media statement stating that they are looking into each of the sexual harassment cases against Kumar. "Even as we were dealing with the first episode, several other allegations surfaced soon thereafter. Please know that we are sincerely looking into each one of them. We are committed to getting to the bottom of these allegations. Many of you have asked so we would like to confirm that yes, we have an ICC (internal complaints committee) set up in each location," the company said. "It’s been a tough couple of days for us at TVF, as you would know. We needed to first and foremost take care of our internal team that has been most impacted by the recent events."
In another statement, the also team announced that their next show 'Bisht, Please!', scheduled to stream from next week has been postponed. "The excitement remains the same, but we are rescheduling the release," said the message as it continued, "We also want to apologize, therefore, about cancelling our on-ground event on Saturday."
The on-ground event was the screening of the first three episodes of the series. Ironically, in conversation with THE WEEK last week (before the entire controversy erupted), Nidhi Bisht, the co-writer and lead protagonist in Bisht, Please!, explained how the entire team was happy to do its first woman-centric show. "We want to bring out the problems a woman faces in day-to-day life," she had said. It was after this that the TVF controversy shook the social media.
Acknowledging the string of events, it said, "Yes, there have been allegations of misbehavior against our founder, from several women. When the first blog appeared on March 12th, it shocked all of us, including our extended set of associates."
The severity of the allegations “confused" the associates.
Since the blog alleged that he/she was an employee with the organisation and even indicated specific content production they were a part of, the team immediately began checking the facts internally. "We did send out an instant response, which may have been a bit too quick and emotional. We recognise that we should have handled that response better. However, it is a fact that we have found no records of any such person on our pay roll, in that given time-period, as described in the blog," the company stated.
TVF reiterated that as a team of 240 strong professionals, the team is determined to work hard in winning the love back. "We will do everything in our capacity to learn and get better, get bigger. Give us that chance," it concluded with a plea.
With so many women having allegedly accused the TVF founder of molestation, it only seems right to look into the matter as it deals with a lot of serious issues, including workplace harassment and safety of women.
