Stand-up comic group All India Bakchod (AIB) on Friday issued a statememt a day after they were called out for 'defending' comedian Utsav Chakraborty, who had admitted to sending sexually explicit images to women on social media. However, Chakraborty has denied the allegations that he had sent any images to minors
The Twitter user, who made the allegations, started a thread condemning Utsav Chakraborty’s sexual misconduct with women, especially minor girls. He has been accused of asking minors to send ‘nudes’.
She then went on to share examples of how “Chakraborty had in fact sent sexually explicit messages to her and to many other women.”
The threat led to a number of women sharing their stories, prompting AIB to release a statement on Thursday.
However, the group has also been called out for their statement by the user, who had in her thread said she had spoken to the founding members of the team, but to no avail. AIB then tweeted this, ""Also, a ton of rumours and allegations flying around suggesting Utsav is / was AIB’s Head Writer. Utsav was never our Head Writer. Also, Utsav has not been an employee at AIB since the end of 2016."
Utsav, too, issued a statement, which claimed that the situation was more 'complicated' than what it appeared to be. He then went on to cite how his 'mental illness' had prompted him to behave the way he did.
On Friday, AIB admitted that one of its co-founders Tanmay Bhat had known of the incident involving Chakraborty, but chose to remain quiet. They then released a detailed statement.
"We would like to address something that's been said since allegations of sexual harassment were made against former AIB employee Utsav Chakraborty yesterday. It's been said that AIB knew of the accusations during his employment and failed to take action. We'd like to offer some clarity on that.
"We messed up. Since yesterday we've been trying to introspect and process what we did wrong, and everything that came up during our conversations all feel like excuses in hindsight and fact of the matter is that we messed up.
"Sometime after Utsav had stopped being an AIB employee, Tanmay Bhat received specific, detailed allegations about him in a private and personal conversation. Tanmay confronted Utsav in a personal capacity - which led to Utsav calling the victim, leading to further harassment. At the time, the accuser did not wish to pursue any further legal action. Out of respect for the person's privacy, nobody else at AIB was informed of the specifics of the situation, and the matter ended there. And so, as a company, we continued working with Utsav in a freelance capacity for a little longer. That's on us. We made a big mistake. We should have cut all ties immediately.
"Since then, there have been occasions where we have heard stray insinuations against Utsav in passing, in green rooms and in comedy circles, most of which were commentary on his unprofessional or confrontational behaviour towards other comics. These insinuations were vague with no specific sexual details and no indication of the degree of sexual transgressions. And so we let our cognitive biases do the work our critical faculties should have. That should have been enough for us to listen, investigate, and take necessary action. We failed to listen when we should have and for that we are sorry. As senior members of the comedy fraternity, we could have showed better stewardship of the culture, by listening, instead of normalising.
"This is the most honest account we can put forward of what we knew, how much we knew, and what we did and didn't do on the basis of the information we had. We made mistakes in how we dealt with this information and this situation.
"But all reasoning beyond a point is just going to sound like we're making excuses. It does not justify any of our actions. We also completely understand anyone who has felt disappointed, or angry, or betrayed by us over the last few days. We're sorry."
