Anu Malik out of ‘Indian Idol’
Singer has been accused by singers Sona Mohapatra and Shweta Pandit of abuse
Singer Anu Malik has been dropped as a jury member on reality show Indian Idol season 10, according to a statement on Sunday.
“Anu Malik is no longer a part of the Indian Idol jury panel. The show will continue its planned schedule and we will invite some of the biggest names in Indian music as guests to join Vishal Dadlani and Neha Kakkar to judge the extraordinary talent of Indian Idol season 10,” the statement said.
He has been accused by singers Sona Mohapatra and Shweta Pandit, who called him a “paedophile” and a “sexual predator”.
Malik has denied allegations that he sexually harassed Pandit.
“The allegations made against my client are emphatically denied as completely false and baseless. My client respects the #MeToo movement, but to use this movement to start a character assassination mission is obnoxious,” Malik’s lawyer Zulfiquar Memon said.
Pandit, in a Twitter post, recounted an incident with Malik dating back to 2000. She claims while in a cabin at a studio, he told her he would give her a song with Sunidhi Chauhan and Shaan “but first give me a kiss now”.
“He then smiled, what I would recall the most evil grin I’ve seen,” Pandit said of the incident that took place when she was 15 years old.
Before Pandit, singer Mohapatra called out Malik for being a “serial offender”.
Mohapatra has also accused singer-composer Kailash Kher of sexual misconduct, claiming he once placed his hands on her thigh.
Mohapatra, who is married to singercomposer Ram Sampath, tweeted about Kher’s misbehaviour.
“I met Kailash for coffee in Prithvi Cafe to discuss a forthcoming concert where both our bands were playing and after the usual, a hand on my thigh with lines like, ‘You’re so beautiful’, ‘Feel so good that a musician got you [Sampath] and not an actor’. I left not soon after,” Mohapatra wrote. —