Director, Producer of Emraan Hashmi's Maiden Production 'Cheat India' Caught in #MeToo Storm

Actor Emraan Hashmi's maiden production Cheat India has once again landed itself in a fresh controversy as its director Soumik Sen and co-producer Atul Kasbekar are caught up in the #MeToo firestorm.

An anonymous actress has recounted her own #MeToo experience with Sen and Kasbekar on the sets of Cheat India.

"After gathering a lot of courage, against the advice of my well wishers, I've finally mustered the courage of anonymously share my encounter with Shoumik Sen and Atul Kasbekar from the set of #CheatIndia", wrote the actress through an anonymous handle on Twitter.

In her alleged disturbing encounter with Sen and Kasbekar, she recalled, "While on sets and in the vanity vans, Soumik would often talk about wanting to see me and my female colleagues enact scenes for a lesbian web series for Netflix. He (Soumik) would narrate unnatural sex scenes and would suggest how we would be apt to play part, all in the presence of Atul Kasbekar who would be flaunting a huge grin on his face. He would also read out erotic poems between scenes. One such encounter had me loosing my cool and asking Soumik to back off, I was sternly warned that if I fuss about such things I would be thrown out of Cheat India. The producer Atul who was also a part of the discussion, chose to keep silent and took no action even when I displayed my discomfort."

She added, “The past few weeks, I’ve interacted with women who have had worse experiences with Atul Kasbekar. Unfortunately, the encounters had them giving up and relocating to start afresh in other countries abroad”.

Kasbekar's production house has, however, issued an official statement on its Twitter handle, stating "while we support the #MeToo movement in India, we urge for people to be wary of unsubstantiated allegations, particularly anonymous ones which could be mischievously made with ulterior motives."

This comes after a senior media professional, named Chandraye Sarkar, accused Sen of sending her lewd messages over a series of days in 2012.

Notably, Hashmi recently shared that he has proposed an inclusion of an anti-sexual harassment clause in the employment contracts at his production house, Emraan Hashmi Films (EHF) in the wake of the #MeToo movement in the country.

"Such clauses are already in contracts in several industries, including MNCs. No film production company has enforced it so far, but with the #MeToo movement that started a decade ago, picking up steam in the West last year and inching towards India, with someone being outed almost every hour on the social media, such clauses have become imperative. In my company at least, it will include both male and female cast and crew members," the actor told Mumbai Mirror.

Earlier, Cheat India was embroiled in a controversy after a Delhi-based director and actor alleged that the script of the film based on scams within the Indian education system, was a rip-off of their film, Marksheet.