Allegations against Sajid Khan: Surprising, disappointing and strange, says Farhan Akhtar

Amid the controversial fire of Me Too movement, many prominent names from the Bollywood fraternity were called out, including filmmaker Sajid Khan. Sajid’s cousin and actor-director Farhan Akhtar opened up about his thoughts upon the matter. He said that he felt “certain level of guilt” for being unaware of the alleged indecent behaviour of his cousin Sajid.

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Sajid has been accused of sexual harassment by multiple women in the wake of India’s #MeToo movement.

Farhan was among the celebrities who had raised his voice against injustice. Soon after the allegations made round on the internet, Sajid had to announce his departure as the director of Akshay Kumar-starrer Housefull 4.

"Everytime something like this has happened in the public domain, I've been very vocal with my opinion. When it came to someone within my family, I felt silence on that front would be very, very hypocritical. So pretty much on the first day when three women came out and spoke, I felt it was important for me to speak out. Sajid, being my brother, I need to now work with him, try to figure out how he can see this thing through and how it is that he can make the women who have been affected by his actions, somehow feel better," Farhan said during a session at 'We The Women' event in Mumbai. 

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Sajid even revealed that when he first got to know about the accusations Sajid, he had conflicted emotions.

“It was surprise, disappointment and strangely, because when it’s a member of your family, you also feel a certain level of guilt. It’s happened to all of us in the past when we hear something like this and say ‘but how come someone so close to him didn’t know.’ The truth is I didn’t. If I did know I would’ve spoken about it way before the story broke. There was this certain guilt about that, how could this be going on and I had no idea. So there were conflicted emotions,” he said.

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The #MeToo movement was triggered in India after Tanushree Dutta accused Nana Patekar of sexually harassing her on the sets of 2008 film Horn Ok Pleasss. This movement gave courage to the many feared voices in the show-biz industry and also across different fraternities.