More than a year after popular stand-up comedian Utsav Chakraborty faced disgrace after a woman accused him of sending his unsolicited nude pictures, the comic seems to have decided to tell his side of the story.
In a series of tweets, Chakraborty recounted what transpired between him and the woman. He began by saying that he "would like to put out a public service announcement to anyone who approached Mahima Kukreja with false or malicious information about me. If you did this, please apologize or at least explain yourself publicly as to why you did what you did."
Mahima Kukreja, who is a 'writer' and 'performer' according to her Twitter handle' had made the allegations against Utsav through social media.
He posted a screenshot of the chats that landed him in trouble saying how they showed him to be a creep. "So convincing that when I first saw it, I believed it myself. Not gonna lie."
He admitted that the words on the screenshot were written by him and added that "Except it's a long string of unreplied words with someone saying that they're uncomfortable at the end."
He further said when he looked further, he realized that one side of the conversations were missing.
The stand-up comic said the girl's reply that she 'won't be comfortable' was not a reply to his "seemingly relentless barge of words" but a reply to him asking her to talk in a video he was asking her to send.
He said after the allegations against him, a lot of people blocked him on social media.
Chakraborty said he tracked the woman online and confronted her. He also shared a screenshot of the conversations he had with her.
"So what I gathered was that @chanya_jaitly shared a doctored picture of our conversation during #metoo with her ex-boyfriend who shared the screenshot without her consent when my name was trending last year thanks to @AGirlOfHerWords' valiant efforts," he tweeted.
He said although he can't debate the “authenticity of her explanation but I'll let her have the benefit of the doubt” and made an appeal to his followers not to harass the woman.
He said this was the first of many.
Further, the comic shared an apology that was put up and added that, "She did not intend any harm. It's possible that she was caught in the vitriol of the movement but so were most of you."
He also shared a conversation that he had with the woman who accused him of asking her for nude pictures to prove that they were in fact on "pretty amicable terms".
He posted another conversation he had with the girl.
Further, the stand-up comic made an appeal to the girl to come out and share her side of the story.
After she came out with an explanation in which she said she had forgotten that she had shared her number with him, he claimed that an "exclusive in-group of ex-Buzzfeed writers, expats and artists. People with 'online-cred' basically. For the past year or so, this privileged cabal of cool has been regurgitating Mahima and Kanika's baseless words in private and public circles."
In another tweet, he denied sending unsolicited “unsolicited dick pics to anyone ever.”