Mumbai, Apr 27 (India Today) : Actress Radhika Apte is back in news again for something she wouldn't like to be known for. According to reports, a video featuring the actress in the nude has been doing the rounds since Sunday on the instant messaging app WhatsApp. The clip is reportedly a scene from a 20-min short film directed by Anurag Kashyap.
Enraged at the violation, director Anurag Kashyap approached the Mumbai Police which immediately took action to nab the culprit.
Talking to The Times Of India, Anurag said that the video is a part of his short film based on a true story. The film has a powerful moment of a woman lifting her dress and expose her lower front part. this sequence of few seconds required a gutsy actress perform.
"My story was inspired by a true story and is a very powerful film. It was very difficult to make this short film due to this little sequence in the film of a few seconds that involves the actress to lift her dress and expose her lower front part and needed that very minor partial nudity front shot. It took us so much time to do it in a non-sexual way, as it is meant to be absolutely non-sexual and we took all the care we could. It was not easy to find an actor who is brave enough to participate in it. The entire shooting crew was women as we knew that we were making something as sensitive as this. And there were girls at every stage of the post-production. At every stage of the post-production, that part was either sent blank or pixelated before being sent. So, nobody even knew who is a part of the film. And everybody assumes that since it is an Indian film, it will always be pixelated. After taking all the care, the film was delivered to New York a month back. And then, all of a sudden after a month from nowhere, this video popped up online," he told TOI.
The director who held himself responsible for putting Radhika in the spotlight said that he immediately approached Mumbai Police to take action.
"Radhika Apte herself was so proud of it. But when you put out a video like this without context, people start making jokes on it. You try to take a step forward as a filmmaker, they take you five steps back. And she feels victimised and I feel responsible. I called up our police commissioner Rakesh Maria as soon as I came to know of it and he immediately acted upon it. He immediately called ACP crime branch Mr Prasanna and he had put the cyber crime branch to work on it on priority. I am confident that they will eventually catch the guy who started it. They have written to Facebook and WhatsApp also. We want that something like this should not happen in the future."
The short film is a part of an international project having six short films directed by directors from different countries put together to make a big film. It is meant for release only in the international market.