Tata Sons issues statement, says will not renew contract with branding consultant Suhel Seth, accused of sexual harassment by at least 6 women.
New Delhi: The #MeToo movement in India has claimed its second high-profile personality. Branding consultant Suhel Seth Monday lost one of his biggest clients, Tata Sons, following a string of sexual harassment and assault allegations levelled against him by multiple women.
Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata Group, Monday announced that it will not renew its contract with Seth.
“Counselage’s (Seth’s firm) contract with Tata Sons will end on November 30, 2018,” read the official statement put out by the conglomerate.
Mid-October, when the allegations surfaced against Seth, the Tata Group had issued a statement saying that it was looking into the matter and would decide on the further course of action.
As the #MeToo movement took the media industry by storm, Seth was accused by at least six women, including model Diandra Soares, filmmaker Natashja Rathore and writer Ira Trivedi, of alleged sexual harassment and assault.
A nearly three-decade association
The parting of ways brings to an end the at least three-decade association between the celebrity PR consultant and Tata Sons.
Seth’s introduction to the Tata Group goes way back to his stint with Ogilvy & Mather in the 1990s. Seth found, by virtue of pitching to the Tatas as an ad-man, his first foot-in-the-door contacts — Russi Mody and Aditya Kashyap, titans at Tata Steel at the time.
Also read: Suhel Seth: The man who ‘collected beautiful people’ and almost got away with everything
Soon, he developed a close working relationship with Ratan Tata himself — an alliance that would come to open many doors for Seth in the business world.
In 2016, Seth was called upon to represent the Tata Group in the very public perception battle that the company was fighting against its recently ousted chairman Cyrus Mistry.
“Suhel Seth who runs the reputation management firm Counselage is helping Ratan Tata in his personal capacity since he’s had a working relationship with him since 1990,” Livemint reported. “Seth is advising the group on its overarching strategy to deal with the current crisis.”
The allegations
Filmmaker and entrepreneur Rathore tweeted on 10 October that Seth put his hand up her kurta and forcibly tried to kiss her when she was in his Gurugram apartment.
She was 25 at the time, while Seth, now 55, was twice her age.
https://twitter.com/natashjarathore/status/1049945331302043648?lang=en
Soon after Rathore’s account, journalist Mandakini Gahlot also took to Twitter to share her experience. “I was 26 when he (Suhel Seth) publicly harassed and humiliated me,” she wrote. “No one stopped him.”
A day prior to these stories, an anonymous account shared through writer Anisha Sharma’s Twitter handle also claimed that Seth started to send her direct messages on Twitter when she was 17, asking her to come over for drinks in his hotel room.
In my WhatsApp messages, an anonymous story about Suhel Seth, who repeatedly asks a 17-year-old girl to join him for drinks, based off one DM, and a birthday wish. @weeny @AGirlOfHerWords @TheRestlessQuil pic.twitter.com/YwvZi783fo
— ???Anisha Sharma??? (@motherofbillis) October 9, 2018
Seth later denied these allegations in a statement to the Quint, claiming that he had passport stamps to prove that he was not in that hotel at the time, let alone in Mumbai.
A woman named Ishita Yadav also came forward, alleging inappropriate behaviour on Seth’s part. She wrote on Twitter that when she was 24, Seth added her on Facebook and began messaging her.
After a few exchanges, he invited her over to his place, adding caveats such as “have a bath and brush your teeth before you come over”.
“It became clear I obviously wasn’t being called over for a conversation,” Yadav wrote.
https://twitter.com/IshitaYadav/status/1050316104738856961
In a Facebook post on 19 October, Soares, a model, had a similar story to tell.
She wrote that when she attended a party after the bridal fashion week in New Delhi a few years ago, “Suhel Seth first (puts his) hands in my blouse so I pinched his ear and twisted it. Then he shoves his tongue down my mouth, (and) I immediately bit his tongue.”
I was in DELHI few years ago for bridal fashion week. And at one of the after party for a show at our hotel itself at a…
Diandra Soares यांनी वर पोस्ट केले मंगळवार, १६ ऑक्टोबर, २०१८
Author Trivedi, in her first-person account in Outlook India, wrote of Seth’s obnoxious behaviour with women, that, she alleged, only got worse the higher he climbed “the ladder of stardom”.
“Once he commented on the size of my breasts, saying that I shouldn’t wear a bra, another time he asked me if I had waxed my legs or not, and once at another literature festival under the effect of alcohol, he made several throwaway comments about my “sexy yoga poses,” Trivedi wrote.
I have seen him in TV debates and thought how this man was regularly invited by channels to air his opinion on different subjects. I thought he was pompous, superficial, and incapable of any serious analysis of topics.