Raja Bhattacharya – theatre personality – accused of minor molestation

Well-known theatre personality Raja Bhattacharya was accused of minor molestation on Sunday. On June 18, a victim took to her social media as alleged a prolonged history of repeated sexual abuse and emotional exploitation. 

In her post, she claimed that she was admitted to Raja Bhattacharya’s theatre group Blank Verse as an apprentice when she was 12. It was 2017. She explained, “Barely a few days had passed since I had joined the class when one day, locking up the rooms after class, he took me to a dark corner in that flat where he used to teach and hugged me tightly and kissed me on my cheeks for quite some time. I was a 12-year-old girl, a fresher in a learning space that I had always wanted to belong to. Even in class, in front of parents, he would ask me along with other children to massage his head and while he made me do it he would rub his head against my breast without anyone realising.”

She further claimed that the alleged perpetrator used to pose as a father figure. “He disguised himself as a very respectable, loving, almost father figure in front of the parents so that they would never realise what was happening and stop it. This was the start of the next four years of severe sexual abuse and molestation that he did to me.”

The survivor further stated that Raja Bhattacharya manipulated the situation in a way that his gesture would look consensual. “On our way home he would always stop on the dark side of the road and would say in a very ‘sweet, childish tone’ as one of a caring parent to kiss him on his cheek. The first few days, not being able to realise what was happening I did it although it made me feel disgusting. After a few such rides, this became a normal routine and protocol on his part, failing to comply to which I was reprimanded, questioned, and scolded. Whenever he asked me to do the same thing and I stayed silent and refused to do it, he was insistent on making me do it. In a tone that would make me feel guilty, he said, ‘Do you not love your sir? Will you not kiss me?’ Every Saturday I would return home with a disgusting feeling and the urge to throw up. On many such Saturdays, he would call me half an hour before the actual class would start ‘to clean the room’. This was the time he made for himself where he could peacefully molest and abuse me without any disturbance, touch me, grope me, and play with me everywhere. Sometimes he would manage to put his mouth inside mine as I tried to keep my lips tightly closed. Then he would brush his hands over my body, my breast, and my stomach, and pull me closer. He pressed my breasts and put his mouth and smother his face in it. He kept doing it as if this was consensual.”

Six years on, the survivor finally opened up. In her post, she mentioned that she stood up for herself and confronted Raja Bhattacharya. “I finally decided two weeks back that I had to come out with this, that I had to confront him and stand up against him. My friend and I had gone yesterday to confront him in front of the parents in his theatre class. There were two mothers in the room. My friend had just started talking when Raja Bhattacharya appeared to convulse, quiver, and faint. My friend, mind you, had not even said anything related to this yet. He came back to his senses seconds later, without anyone’s help. I started to relate all the incidents specifically and how they had affected me. He on the other hand asked me to wait since he was not feeling well, which I did. Then he had the audacity to question me why I had not come to him before with this incident as if that was the real problem here! Following several such conversations, most of which he remained silent, he said that he was “sorry”. How sweet and kind of him! He said that since it is a thing in the past and he cannot alter it, he can only beg me to forgive him. According to this guy, it was a ‘mistake’. A mistake that one made repeatedly for four consecutive years, every Saturday. For sure that is a mistake! Then he dared to say that he might have done it because he had some problem then and that I should forgive him. The moment I said I would go public, he started to sense this was a serious accusation I was making and begged me to stop. The only thing that budged him, since his career would be at stake, constantly texting me to not go public with this as he would lose his job. His sorries were then directed to my friend as I would hear none of it,” she wrote. 

While a number of theatre personalities, including Sujoy Prosad Chatterjee, Gulshanara Khatun, and others came to her support, a series of other eminent theatre workers kept silent. A theatre personality Debdas Ghosh, who worked with Raja Bhattacharya for years and condemned the incident on social media, said, “It is scary how the other theatre personalities are keeping mum. It forces me to think that they are scared that if they speak up their dark history would come out. The theatre space has become a den of moral corruption. I support the victim wholeheartedly and want the matter to be probed.”