MID-AFTERNOON, ON 4 OCTOBER 2018, Mahima Kukreja, a writer and comic, posted a revelation on Twitter.
I want everyone to know @Wootsaw is a piece of shit. He sent me a dick pic, was creepy, then cried saying I’ll ruin his career if I tell others. I told two of the most influential men in comedy in India. Nothing happened. Let me tell you what else he has done with others.
@Wootsaw is the Twitter handle of Utsav Chakravarty, a well-known comedian in India’s growing comedy circuit. Kukreja said that her encounter with Chakravarty took place in 2016, and put up a thread of tweets that day with testimonies from other women alleging harassment by Chakravarty. One of the “influential men” she had alerted was Tanmay Bhat—a founder of All India Bakchod, arguably India’s most successful comedy collective. Chakravarty was once employed by AIB and the collective had continued to collaborate with him even after Kukreja informed Bhat of the incident.
Kukreja added to a wave of Indian women’s accounts of sexual harassment that was then just starting to swell on social media. As the courage of women speaking out emboldened others, more and more survivors of harassment started coming forward. Within 24 hours of her first tweet, Kukreja posted another woman’s account to her series, with screenshots of testimonies sent to her.
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