CONTROVERSY

TVF under fire as more women allege harassment

tvf-harassment

Comedy collective The Viral Fever (TVF) and its founder Arunabh Kumar have been under fire for not promising an investigation into sexual harassment claims made by an ex-employee. The woman, known as Indian Fowler in her blog post on Medium, revealed that she was harassed multiple times during her two-year stint with the company.

She said that it “became routine” for him to find reasons to misbehave with her. When she threatened to go to the police, he said that he has the police in his “pocket”. She also reported to colleagues, but in vain.

While the post was published on Sunday night, it was picked up by social media users yesterday and discussions are still on. First reaction to the issue included shock, with many followers of TVF not believing the incident to be true. Marked with shades of chauvinism, many commented that the post, seeing as it is anonymous, was fake. Some even said that the post was a publicity stunt by TVF.

On Monday, TVF issued a statement on Medium claiming that these were false allegations. “The article is completely ludicrous and defamatory against TVF and its team,” it said, adding that the allegations were “categorically false, baseless and unverified”. The statement also ominously threatened, “We will leave no stone unturned to find the author of the article and bring them to severe justice for making such false allegations.”

At the same time, more women came out in the public to validate the case. “I felt exploited and cheated and I left my job under very bad experiences,” said one woman, “It is indeed no place for a woman.”

Another woman, a director and actor, posted on Facebook, accusing him of being a “sleaze”. She recounted her experience, adding, “Today, I had to choose between keeping quiet and extending my support to a girl who has bravely spoken up. So I am choosing to do the right thing. TVF can release as many ‘official responses’ rubbishing these claims as they’d like. This is my truth.”

On Twitter, comments ranged from echoing the TVF version of events to proudly supporting the nine women who spoke up. A few lamented how workplace harassment spread to the start-up culture, while many asked how many more women's statements it would take for the company to launch a formal investigation into the matter.

Meanwhile, users noted that only a select number of comedians made any comment at all.

Rohan Joshi of the AIB collective responded to an anonymous Reddit post that claimed that he had misbehaved with someone. The Reddit post was taken down instantly, and the user (whose account was created an hour before the post) issued another post apologising and saying that Joshi was a “great guy” and no such thing had happened.

While Joshi handled the situation well, asking for a police investigation, many claimed that the true intent of this post was to water down the issue and make it more difficult for women to open up anonymously.

On the other hand, Biswapati Sarkar and other ex-TVF employees spoke up against the Indian Fowler and her blog post. “It makes for a great fictional story,” said Sarkar on Twitter, “I'm sure more anonymous ex-TVF employee stories will drop in. I know a lot of people love the sensationalist story behind it. But sadly, it isn't true.”

Aditi Singh also shared Nidhi Bisht's statement that said, “When the first blog post came out 24 hours back, I dismissed it completely because there was no such person of that description in the company at that time.” She also added that TVF has “zero tolerance towards workplace harassment” and claimed an investigation would be conducted. However, no official statement from TVF said so.

The issue still rages on social media, as people wait for TVF to take the right action.

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