Two days after HuffPost India published a detailed account of a woman who was sexually assaulted by Queen director Vikas Bahl in 2015, Nayani Dixit, who has acted in the movie, said she has also been sexually harassed by him.
Dixit, who played the role of Sonal in Queen, told Bollywood Hungama in an interview, "Whatever the girl has accused Vikas Bahl is not at all wrong because he also tried his hand on me. I literally told him that 'main tumhe maarungi if you do this again'. So I am sure he did the same with the girl in question as well."
She said the next day when she came on set, Bahl was rude to her. "Now when I look back, I realised that why this behaviour. Since he did not get a chance on me, he was taking revenge," Dixit recounted.
She also told the website that Bahl asked her to share a room with him because she had told him she was not comfortable with the hotel she was booked in.
Another unnamed actor has told MissMalini.com that Bahl forcibly tried to kiss her at a party.
MissMalini.com quoted the actor as saying, "He's (Vikas Bahl) has always been dodgy, so I've never hung out with him alone for that reason. One day he was having a party where a lot of people I knew were going so I felt safe. But he got really drunk (or pretended to be) and he forcibly tried to kiss me on the lips, I pushed him and left immediately and he pretended not to see me leaving. At least 20 other people were at this party. I left in a rush went to my boyfriends house because I was so disgusted but he kept sending me texts – saying 'Why did you leave, I could have dropped you'."
Queen actor Kangana Ranaut has also come out in support of the survivor, who was interviewed in the first report by HuffPost India, and said that Bahl was know for his bad behaviour towards women.
Ranaut said in a statement, "(I) Totally believe her, even though Vikas was married back in 2014 when we were filming Queen, he bragged about having casual sex with a new partner every other day. I don't judge people and their marriages but you can tell when addiction becomes sickness."
Ranaut said that Bahl would "bury his face" in her neck every time they met socially or hugged each other.
"He'd bury his face in my neck, hold me really tight and breathe in the smell of my hair. It took me great amount of strength and effort to pull myself out of his embrace. He'd say 'I love how you smell K'. I could tell something is wrong with him," Ranaut had said.
In the aftermath of the report published by HuffPost India, Bahl was dropped from a project by Amazon Prime Video.
While Phantom Films was dissolved, possibly in anticipation of the HuffPost India report, the first survivor who spoke out remains unemployed after she left the company in the aftermath of the assault.