A sessions court in Mumbai said veteran actor Alok Nath may have been falsely implicated in the Vinta Nanda rape case. While granting anticipatory bail to Alok Nath, the court, on Saturday said that Vinta Nanda may have delayed filing a complaint of rape for 'her own benefit'.
A report by the Hindustan Times stated that the Dindoshi sessions court order dated January 5 noted that 'promptness in lodging the FIR is an assurance regarding truth of informant's version'. When the MeToo wave gathered steam in India, writer-producer Nanda had accused Nath of raping her 19 years ago.
According to reports, Nath had filed plea for anticipatory bail in the Dindoshi sessions court on December 14 last year. On November 21, a rape case was filed against Nath by the Mumbai police, based on a complaint by filmmaker-writer Vinta Nanda. In the midst of the MeToo storm, Nanda had accused the actor of raping her 19 years ago.
Nanda, who worked with Alok Nath in the '90s hit TV show Tara, opened up about being 'brutally raped' by the actor 20 years ago. In a lengthy Facebook post on October 8, she recounted the harrowing experience. “He was an alcoholic, shameless and obnoxious but he was also the television star of that decade, so not only was he forgiven for all his bad behaviour but many of the guys would egg him on to be his worst. My lead female actor was being harassed by him. He would mess with her on the sets and everyone would be silent. When she complained to us, we decided to let him go,” she wrote in the lengthy post.
Recounting her 'worst' experience, she wrote that she left Alok Nath's home after a party at 2am, and that her drinks were mixed. “I started to walk home on the empty streets although the distance to my own house was long. Midway I was accosted by this man who was driving his own car and he asked me to sit in it and said he would drop me home. I trusted him and sat in his car. I have faint memory after that. I can remember more liquor being poured into my mouth and I remember being violated endlessly. When I woke up the next afternoon, I was in pain. I hadn’t just been raped, I was taken to my own house and had been brutalised,” she wrote.
Following the allegations, Actor Alok Nath and his wife Ashu Saturday filed a complaint in a local court seeking defamation proceedings to be initiated against Vinta Nanda. Nath's lawyer refuted the allegations and said they were baseless and devoid of any merit.
After Nanda's went public with her story, actress Sandhya Mridul also accused him of sexual misconduct. In December, the Cine and TV Artists Association expelled Alok Nath.
