Chief executive officer and founder of The Viral Fever Arunabh Kumar, who had been booked on charges of molestation, was granted interim relief from arrest by the Dindoshi Sessions Court in Mumbai on Sunday, ANI reported. A case had been lodged against Kumar at a police station in Andheri East on March 29 after multiple women accused him of harassing them. Kumar had moved an anticipatory bail petition last Friday.
On March 12, in a blog post on Medium titled “The Indian Uber – That Is TVF”, a former employee of the entertainment company chronicled the months of harassment Kumar had allegedly subjected her to since 2014. She accused him of making lewd comments, molesting her and making countless passes at her both in office and during shoots and also “acting as a pimp”. The post was later taken down after Kumar lodged a complaint with the website.
The woman identified herself as “Indian Fowler” on Medium, after former Uber employee Susan Fowler, who had exposed cases of sexual harassment at her firm on social media last month. In her post, the only reference to the TVF complainant’s identity was that she came from Muzaffarpur. However, Kumar denied hiring any staff from the city in the past three years.
TVF, too, declared the claims “false, baseless and unverified”. “We take a lot of pride in our team and in making TVF a safe workplace that is equally comfortable for women and men. We will leave no stone unturned to find the author of the article and bring them to severe justice for making such false allegations.”
Since then, three other women had taken to social media to accuse Kumar of harassment and molestation and another FIR had been registered against him in Versova Police Station, The Indian Express reported.
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