Tanushree Dutta Reacts to Nana Patekar’s Death; Association

Actor Tanushree Dutta’s reaction to the death of Nana Patekar has drawn a sharp response from a cine association, which called it “cheap publicity”, according to the report we have seen. The row comes days after the veteran actor died at 75.

What Tanushree Dutta said

Dutta responded to Patekar’s death by describing him as “evil dead”, the report says. She also spoke about the emotional toll she says she went through after making a #MeToo allegation against him.

How the association responded

A cine association has described her remarks as “cheap publicity”.

The background: the 2018 allegation

In 2018, Dutta publicly accused Patekar of misbehaving with her on the sets of the 2009 film Horn ‘Ok’ Pleassss, an allegation she had first raised in 2008. Patekar had denied the allegations at the time. He has continued to deny them, and Dutta’s 2018 accusation is widely seen as the start of India’s #MeToo movement in Bollywood.

At the time, Patekar sent Dutta a legal notice asking her to apologise, and the Cine and TV Artists Association said it was ready to hold a fresh inquiry into her complaint. Several film figures also publicly backed Dutta in 2018.

Why the reaction is divisive

Patekar’s death drew tributes from the Prime Minister, the President, and many in the film industry, while Dutta’s comments took a very different tone. Her allegations were never proven in court, and Patekar always denied them. Reactions to a person’s death often split along exactly these lines, and the question of how to speak about the dead, particularly when the person was accused of wrongdoing, divides people.