#MenToo: Former AIB Collaborator Utsav Chakraborty Calls Out 4 Women For False Allegations With Proof
Niharika has a passion for all things art, music, and travel and has over 4 years of experience in writing for social media. During her spare time, she likes experimenting in the kitchen, playing vide... read full bio
The internet can be both a blessing and a curse. In the case of comedian Utsav Chakraborty, it turned out to be more harmful than helpful. A year ago, Utsav was at the top of his game; a frequent AIB collaborator and an up and coming comedian in his own right. His career trajectory, however, took a turn for the worse after four women accused him of misbehavior and harassment on Twitter. The chief accuser being a woman named Mahima Kukreja. Read on to know the facts and how false allegations can impact one’s career:
The Incident
In October of the year 2018, Twitter user Mahima Kukreja came forward with what appeared to be screenshots of text exchanges between her and Utsav Chakraborty. According to Mahima, Utsav had begged her to not come forward with her story as it would have ruined his career. Mahima’s posts gained a lot of attention from various media outlets who then proceeded to name and shame Utsav despite having little to no substantial evidence of the exchanges. Along with Mahima, two other women by the names of Kanika Kaul, Chanya Jaitly and ex-AIB employee Krupa Gohil came forward with stories of their own.
Following the allegations, Utsav’s frequent collaborators and close friends, AIB took down all videos featuring him and condemned his actions publicly. The comedy group put out a press release on their Instagram and Facebook profiles regarding the matter. One of the founding members of AIB, Tanmay Bhat was accused of being complicit and keeping quiet about complaints made against Utsav. Despite releasing a statement apologizing, Bhat was asked to step down from his role and leave the company indefinitely.
Matters were made worse when another founding member, Gursimran Khamba, was accused of violating a woman’s emotional and physical consent. He had denied the claims of the relationship being non-consensual but has admitted to indulging in toxic behavior like blackmailing the other person. He was asked to step down from his role as well and went on to start his own comedic venture.
A few Twitter users decided to do some digging of their own and harassed and called AIB out online for past ‘offensive and misogynistic’ tweets they had made. Due to the controversies associated with them, the company released a statement mentioning that they would be ceasing all operations and letting go of all their employees.
Innocent Until Proven Guilty
On November 21st 2019, after a year of silence, Utsav Chakraborty finally came forward with evidence supporting his claims of the exchanges between him and Mahima being consensual. He even uploaded an audio recording in which her sister, who was representing her as an advocate, threatened to take legal action on him if he shared his side of the story. Utsav also called out Mahima for sharing tweets from women who had absolutely no proof that he had sent them explicit texts. Mahima used these unproven and anonymous stories to lambast Utsav and defame him as well as his close friends and associates.
He later posted a series of screenshots detailing his side of exchanges with Chanya Jaitly and explained how she had conveniently deleted her replies to the texts to make the conversation seem completely one-sided. When confronted, she admitted that it was because she didn’t want her ex to know she was having ‘intimate conversations’ with other men online. Once Utsav reached out to her, she went to Twitter and explained that the screenshots had been shared online by a stranger without her consent and apologized publicly for maligning Utsav’s image.
In the case of Krupa Gohil who had alleged that Utsav had sent her an unsolicited picture of his privates, he shared screenshots where she had consented to receive the image and had also sent across a nude image of her own as a reply. When he came forward with this story, Krupa proceeded to attack him for saving screenshots of her nude (blurred out) without her consent; despite the fact that she had shared their conversations without his consent (hypocrite much?). Utsav also shared screenshots of prior conversations with Krupa where they had consensually exchanged private messages on WhatsApp as well as Snapchat. Thus, proving that they were involved in some kind of intimate texting prior to her accusing him of misconduct. Krupa also went onto Instagram live and made light of the fact that Utsav suffers from Lupus and said, “I hope his Lupus eats him from the inside, only leaving skin.”
Utsav also shared screenshots that were clearly doctored and edited to make him look bad and brought up how easy it is to manipulate images on applications like Photoshop. All the people that Utsav have called out have turned their accounts from public to private in a matter of a day due to the backlash from being in their own words ‘exposed’. Read some of the tweets below.
While the #MeToo movement started out as something positive and was meant to bring down predators who were in a higher level of power, it has often been misused. Lately, there have been many cases of women coming forward and leading a mob-justice like online brigade against men across social media. Let’s ask ourselves one question: Is it okay to critique mob justice when it happens in the real world but support it and join in vehemently when it happens online? Tell us what you think of this incident. Do you think the outrage was uncalled for?
