How #MeToo turned into a people's campaign in smaller Indian cities, too

It was a seemingly harmless tweet that enraged Mahima Kukreja and put the 28-year-old on the frontline of India’s #MeToo firestorm.

The advertising professional was on her way to work Oct. 4 when she saw a message from popular comedian Utsav Chakraborty, who has a television show and nearly 50,000 Twitter followers, about a recent incident of Indian men behaving badly on a cruise ship in Australia, which he said was an “embarrassment” to fellow citizens. Wasn’t this the same person who’d sent her an unsolicited photograph of a penis two years ago?

“I was like, ‘this is a man standing on some moral high ground after harassing me,” Kukreja recalled during an interview at a Mumbai cafe. “At that moment, I wasn’t thinking of consequences. I thought: ‘This is it. I’m just going to come out with my story.”

She replied to his tweet with her allegations. Chakraborty issued a public apology within hours, in which he admitted to sending such photographs to several women and blamed it on a haze of painkillers to control a chronic illness. He couldn’t immediately comment when reached directly.

Soon a wave of messages hit Kukreja’s inbox. Many were expressing sympathy and solidarity, but others were from women requesting her to voice their own experiences of harassment and assault with various men they’d met at and outside the workplace. Read Complete Article

Business Standard