Arunabh Kumar, former CEO of web comedy channel The Viral Fever, has been acquitted in 2017 sexual harassment case by a Mumbai court. According to news agency PTI, the court ruled that there was an ‘unexplained and unreasonable’ delay in filing the First Information Report (FIR) in the matter.
The alleged incident reportedly took place in 2014 and a complaint was filed three years later when the complainant came across other women making similar allegations on social media. The woman anonymously posted on medium.com under the title ‘The Indian Uber- That is TVF’ and claimed that the founder of the online content company had allegedly molested her during her tenure at the company.
The Andheri police filed a case in 2017 against Arunabh under Indian Penal Code Sections 354 A (causing sexual harassment) and 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) based on the complaint of the former employee.
Metropolitan Magistrate (Andheri court) A I Shaikh had acquitted him in September, stating that ‘there is no concrete evidence produced by the prosecution’.
‘There is material discrepancy and contradiction. There is even unreasonable and unexplained delay in filing the FIR, which raised clouds on the case of the prosecution,’ the court said, as per PTI.
Arunabh Kumar founded TVF in 2011. He stepped down as CEO in 2017 after multiple sexual harassment accusations and handed over charges to Dhawal Gusain.
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