Pandit accuses Anu Malik of harassment

Mumbai: Singer Shweta Pandit on Wednesday accused music composer Anu Malik of harassment when she was a minor. In a lengthy post on Twitter, the singer accused Malik of being a “pedophile and sexual predator”, saying he misbehaved with her when she was a greenhorn in the Hindi music industry.

“It was in 2000 when I was launched as a lead singer with Mohabbatein and was trying to get other good songs to follow up with the success of that soundtrack,” she said. Pandit said she was an admirer of the musician and was thrilled when she received a call from Malik’s manager in mid-2001 to meet him at Andheri’s Empire Studio. “He was recording a group song with Sunidhi and Shaan for the film Awara Pagal Deewana, when my mother and I walked into the monitor room.

“He told me to wait in the small cabin inside where singers sang. It was just him and me there,” she said. Malik then asked Pandit to sing a few lines for a voice test. “I sang it well so he said, ‘I'll give you this song with Sunidhi and Shaan but first give me a kiss now’. He then smiled, what I’d recall the most evil grin I've seen. I went numb and pale in the face. I was only 15 then, still in school,” she said.

“Can anyone even imagine what it felt like at that moment? I reffered to this man as ‘Anu uncle’. He knew my entire family.”