Chennai: The #MeToo movement on social media is garnering headlines day-after-day with sexual harassment charges being made out on not just film personalities, including national award winning lyricist Vairamuthu, but also against classical musicians, actors, journalists and television personalities.
No sooner popular playback singer Chinmayee blamed Vairamuthu of allegedly attempting sexual assault on a few women, many came forward to post their horrifying experience with celebrities from various walks of life.
From Bollywood actor Alok Nath to journalist-politician M J Akbar and Vairamuthu, none was spared.
In a shocking series of tweets, Chinmayee last night came out with a few names from the Carnatic music field, alleging sexual assault on their students.
She wrote, ‘B M Sundaram, Pappu Venugopal Rao, Sunil Kothari, Lokanatha Sarma, T N Seshagopalan, Sasikiran, Ravikiran, O S Thyagarajan. My inbox is crawling with stories from people. For you too the #TimesUP’.
She also said, ‘Stop assaulting young girls. The stench from the Carnatic Classical scene is worse than I imagined it.’
Quoting an anonymous DM that she received from a girl, Chinmayee said, ‘O S Thyagarajan his Abheri and him sexually assaulting kids. This girl is from a musical family I personally know. I wish he goes to jail.’
Coming down heavily on Mandolin U Rajesh, Chinmayee wrote, ‘A story about Rajesh that the ‘mother’ doesn’t want to share. Says they will know if they know the story. I mean how many are paedophiles?? 15 year old daughter groped in the excuse of a music class. Throw away your instrument.’
Chinmayee also took a dig at Seshachari of famous vocalists, Hyderabad Brothers.
There are accusations being made on social media by a few women, who don’t want to reveal their identity, against television personality Ramesh Prabha, actor John Vijay and film dance master Kalyan.
‘Every educational institution or workplace must tell students / new recruits of what to do, whom to ask for help when they feel violated. For aeons have we ignored, asking girls and boys to shut up and not talk about ‘all that’. Speak now. Speak later. Be kind on yourself,’ wrote Chinmayee.