Vairamuthu fights back! Trashes #MeToo allegations against him

Seven-time National Award winning lyricist Vairamuthu, whose name had come under a cloud after singer Chinmayi and some other women had levelled sexual harassment allegations against him in the wake of the #MeToo movement, today issued a video statement trashing the allegations levelled against him.

In a video, Vairamuthu, who is known to be feminist,  said, “The allegations that are being levelled against me are all completely, completely false. These allegations have been levelled with ulterior motives. If they are true, those involved in it are free to file a case against me. I am waiting to meet it. After having intense consultations with senior lawyers and intellectuals during the last week. I have gathered and collated unshakeable evidence. You can file a case and I am waiting to meet it. Let nobody decide now whether I am good or bad. Let a court of law state it. I bow my head before the law. Thank you.”

It may be recalled that Chinmayi, also a feminist, has been in the forefront of the #MeToo movement in India. The movement is aimed at naming and shaming men, who are alleged to have sexually harrassed women. As part of the movement, Chinmayi has been retweeting women’s allegations of sexual abuse. She has also levelled her own allegations of sexual harrassment against Vairamuthu.

Here are some of the allegations Chinmayi has either retweeted or tweeted on behalf of women who claim to have been harrassed by Vairamuthu.

One of the allegations that she posted on her Twitter account on behalf of a woman, read, “I made an appointment to go meet Vairamuthu for a project. His wife Ponmani, a poet of note herself, used to be a lecturer at the college. As god will have it, I stopped downstairs to say hello before I went upstairs to meet him. I think it was an open secret that he was a predator. His wife kept tabs on him while I was there talking to him and kept calling his office from their residence downstairs. Inspite of that, he kept shaking my hands and told me he could arrange a career in films for me. Briefly after, his wife came upstairs in the pretexr of asking something to him and I realised I was being rescued. I left only after he took my number. He has called on my home phone at least a dozen times urging me to come back and finish the interview. He was not afraid at all to exploit his celebrity status or undeserved, overrated respect in society to preyu on girls and women. He must be stripped of all the respect and stature he enjoys in society. He is good at his job, but that shouldn’t pardon him from his dark flaws.”

Chinmayi had gone on to tweet another allegation by another woman, who identified herself by the name, Sindhu Rajaramji. That tweet read, “I was 18, I worked as a sound engineer. My parents were moving to Bangalore and my mother was looking for a hostel to settle me into. She read about a women’s hostel run by Mr Vairamuthu. Since I often had late night recording sessions, my mother wanted to talk to someone about the hostel’s curfew and was directly put through to Mr Vairamuthu himself. He was keen to know about me and invited me and my parents to his office at Kodambakkam. I had taken my demo CD with me and he was impressed with my work and promised to introduce me to Mr Rahman.

“His eyes were all over my mother looking at all the wrong spots.

“A week later, he called me to A RR’s studio and introduced me to ARR as promised but after a few days, he began calling me. He would say he was thinking about me all the time and missed me… Then, he would say he has written “kavithai” in my thoughts… then once he said he was falling in love with me. I responded saying, ‘Sir, you are like my father and I cannot imagine you saying stuff like this.’ All the while I picked his call out of respect. Then, he frantically called again apologising to me and called me to both his Besant Nagar office and the one near Sun TV office… saying he had ideas to discuss with me and wanted me to come over.

“Meanwhile, I also heard stories from other people that he calls women with some random reason and they end up being touched/molested. Fearing this, I avoided him.

“Since his name started to come out, I felt the need to support other women who have faced him I believe all of them. I believe what happened to you at Sydney.”