ME TOO CONTROVERSY: THIAGARAJAN RESPONDS TO THE SEXUAL HARASSMENT ALLEGATIONS AGAINST HIM!

In the wake of the Me Too movement and all the sexual harassment allegations on celebrities by anonymous and other women from and outside the industry, the most recent one was that against the actor and director Thiagarajan. 

A young photographer by the name Pretika Menon had claimed that Thiagarajan had made sexual advances on her when she was on the set of his film Ponnar Shankar as a working still photographer. Her social media post went viral after she called out Thiagarajan for the same. 

Now, Thiagarajan arranged a press meet to respond to all the allegations. He quashed all of it and claimed that it was false. Read ahead to find out what he said:

"It was a fort called Ranjankodi, not near Coimbatore like the girl has written. We had made so many hundreds of people staying there and being the director and producer, I had arranged to make sure everyone is safe, with the doctors and people to take care, being a part of the huge crew. 

As part of that, this girl had joined as an apprentice photographer. She was there for two days and then she caught a severe cold, so we sent her off and Prashanth arranged a car for her. Along with her, she took the working stills that she shot and after that, we never knew of her whereabouts. While shooting such a difficult sequence, the girl says I knocked on her room door at 12 am,1am and 4 am.

But we had planned the shoot in such a way that we began at 2 pm in the afternoon and it would go on till the next day. We barely got time to sleep there. Once a random girl posts on Facebook that I sexually harassed her, the name that I had earned in the past 50 years was tarnished. Its all over the papers, Facebook and Whatsapp. Me Too is a very good movement and its something great for the women. But people should not misuse it. If people misuse it, it spoils the movement. 

I am going to file a defamation suit against her but we aren't sure of her whereabouts. We are currently working on filing the suit and once I do, it will be a lesson to those who are misusing the movement. This is not good for the industry at a time where people in the film industry struggle to get loans and houses. The commoners will start to have a bad image of the industry. 

I request all the press and media to investigate the allegations with the people involved before blindly reporting such claims from random people. When you just report without any confirmation or intricate investigation, it immensely hurts a lot of people. I completely deny this allegation and I will be taking strict action against this."