Casting couch row: Harassment slur on Odia filmmaker Sanjay Nayak
BHUBANESWAR: Odia actor Jasmine Rath has levelled harassment allegations against film producer Sanjay Nayak alias Tutu Nayak. The matter came to the fore when pictures of WhatsApp chats between some members of the film industry on the issue went viral on Friday.
The actor alleged she was thrown out of a film project for refusing to meet Sanjay at a club in the city a few months back. “He wanted to meet me in a club to fix my dates for a film but I had refused because I was shooting for another film on the same day and it was already late in the night. When a friend of mine who is managing my dates called him to tell him that I will not have a problem with dates for shooting for his film, he was offended,” the actress said.
She added Sanjay resorted to a character assassination drive against her because of which she lost some movies. Actor Prakruti Mishra corroborated Jasmine’s allegations saying the producer lured newcomers with false promises of launching them.
Refuting the allegations, Sanjay said the actor is being instigated by other producers. Blaming her for being unprofessional, he said when he got a call from her boyfriend to discuss her dates, he asked the producers of the film Sameer Ranjan and Rashmi Ranjan to drop her. “Prakruti is reacting because of objections raised by him on her alleged relationship with Babushaan Mohanty,” he said.