Jain says the incident occurred when Dua interviewed her for a job. Dua denies the allegation, says he’ll issue a statement Monday.
New Delhi: As the #MeToo movement continues to rage, acclaimed filmmaker Nishtha Jain took to Facebook Sunday to describe how senior journalist Vinod Dua allegedly sexually harassed her nearly 30 years ago.
In her Facebook post published Sunday, Jain said Dua, who she had met in 1989 for a job interview, allegedly told her “a lewd sexual joke” before she could even settle down. After she told him the salary she was expecting, he allegedly told her “Tumhari aukat kya hai?” (What is your worth?)
Later, Dua would allegedly go on stalking her, and even “slobbered” all over her face on one occasion, she said.
Speaking to ThePrint later in the day over the phone, Jain recalled “feeling terrible”. “Things like these disrupt you in many ways…There’s a fear — a fear of interviews, for instance,” she said.
Reached for a comment by ThePrint, Dua said: “I will be releasing a statement tomorrow, it will answer all the questions.”
Dua is currently consulting editor at The Wire, whose founding editors have issued a statement saying the Internal Complaints Committee has taken note of her allegation. “Dua denies the charge,” the statement reads.
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‘Did he forget what he had done?’
Last year, Dua’s daughter, actor and comedian Mallika Dua, had called out Bollywood star Akshay Kumar for telling her: “Mallika ji aap bell bajaaiye, main aapko bajaata hoon,” during a shoot.
Jain said: “He (Dua) supported his daughter, who called out Akshay Kumar’s sexist comments. At the time, I thought, ‘has he really forgotten what he did to other women? How is he any better than Akshay?’
“He (Dua) cannot go on behaving like a saint teaching people what constitutes sexual harassment, because he is not one.”
On the #MeToo movement
Jain said women speaking out against men is an extremely encouraging development, but wondered why men were not calling themselves out. “How come no man is outing himself? Is there no introspection? Are they not pausing and asking themselves if there was a moment they did something wrong?” she asked.
While Jain admitted that there is a fear of fabricated accounts surfacing in the #MeToo wave, they should not stop women from outing their harassers.
“Not outing men for the fear of misuse of #MeToo is like saying because there is fake news, there should not be news in general,” she said.
Also read: Wish #MeToo had started sooner, says judge who accused retired HC justice of harassment
Further, Jain said it was always possible to differentiate between genuine and fake accounts.
“In his (Dua’s) case, people are believing me very easily, and already, other women have started coming out…I hope that my account gives strength to other women to out him,” she said.
Within minutes of Jain’s post, several people began to share Jain’s account as evidence of the “Left’s hypocrisy” and the need to call out and punish men who subscribe to the ideology. Jain said while she was aware that this could be used by the Right wing — since Dua is a well-known Left-liberal voice who criticises the BJP government.
“For me to not call him out because he belongs to my ideology is like saying ‘I am a Dalit, so I will not call out a Dalit man who rapes me’,” she said.