Speaking up in support of the sexual assault survivor who recently spoke to HuffPost India about her ordeal, actress Kangana Ranaut has accused Queen director Vikas Bahl of sexually harassing her during the making of the movie – which was ironically all about female empowerment.

“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. He partied every night and shamed me for sleeping early and not being cool enough,” Ranaut told India Today.

She also stated that there were times when Bahl would “hold her really tight” and also “smell her hair”. “But still every time we met, socially greeted and 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,” the 31-year-old actress added.

Yesterday, Anurag Kashyap had announced that Phantom Films has been dissolved. HuffPost India reports that the dissolution could be a result of the allegations against Bahl.

In her HuffPost interview, the survivor had stated that on the early hours of May 5, 2015, Bahl had insisted on dropping her to her hotel room, pretended to pass out drunk on her bed and then masturbated on her. She also states that she had spoken to Kashyap about this in October of that year. “Whatever happened was wrong. We didn’t handle it well, we failed. I cannot blame anyone but myself,” Kashyap told HuffPost. “But now we are determined to do better. We believe her completely. She has our undying support. What Bahl has done is horrifying. We are already on our path of course correction and will do everything in our capacity to fix it.”

(Header credits: Wikimedia Commons)