#MeToo: Actor Arjun Sarja Fights Back With Charges Of Criminal Conspiracy, Extortion Against Sruthi Hariharan

Arjun Sarja’s family has approached Bengaluru city police with a 400-page formal complaint that accuses his co-actor Sruthi Hariharan of ‘criminal conspiracy’ to malign actor’s image. The actress had recently accused Arjun Sarja of sexual harassment during a rehearsal.

A relative of Sarja met Commissioner T. Suneel Kumar on Thursday, October 25 and submitted the complaint. The charges pressed are related to criminal conspiracy, fake accounts on social media for the purpose of ‘exhorting money’, cheating by impersonation, and a few other sections of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

In the press meet, Sarja said that there is no question of withdrawal of cases against Sruthi. The latter has maintained silence as of now and will issue a legal reply on the matter soon, The Hindu reported.

Since the issue gained a lot of public attention, the film industry’s Central Reconciliation Committee (CRC) of Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce tried resolving the tensions between the two.

Former minister and senior actor Ambarish, who heads CRC expressed discontentment with politicisation of the issue and has been quoted as saying, “Giving political colour to the issue is not right, as people belonging to all religions, all castes and all political parties, watch films.”

He further added that according to the provisions under the Sexual Harassment of Women and Work Place Act, 2013, a Gender Sensitisation and Internal Complaints Committee will soon be constituted.