Television actor Shilpa Shinde grabbed headlines earlier this year when she confessed to filing a fake sexual harassment case against Bhabiji Ghar Par Hain producer, Sanjay Kohli. The actor is now a contestant in the reality show Lock Upp. In the recent episode, Shilpa recalled facing harassment after she was ousted from the show in 2016. She claimed that a media person even threatened to leak her fake MMS.
Event Context
While talking to Varun Yadav, Shilpa recalled, “Voh mera jo journey tha, 2015-16, I was on a show. Show se mujhe nikala gaya, all that drama happened, uske baad mere peeche pade hue hi the bahut saare toh mere pass koi rasta hi nahi tha. Uske baad ek media waali mujhe ek video clip bhejti hai. Maine kaha kya hai yeh? Voh bolti aapka video hai. I was like my video? Toh boli dekhiye kholke. Toh 2 minute kholne se pehle jab download ho raha tha, I kept thinking kahin yeh video mere changing room se toh nahi hai. Ek dum thandi body hogyi meri (My journey started around 2015–16, when I was on a reality show. I was removed from the show, and all that drama happened. After that, a lot of people were constantly after me, so I really had no way out. Then a woman from the media sent me a video clip. I asked her, ‘What is this?’ She said, ‘It’s your video.’ I was like, ‘My video?’ She told me, ‘Open it and watch.’ While it was downloading, for those two minutes, I kept thinking, ‘What if this is a video from my changing room?’ My whole body went cold)”
Shilpa recalled that she was sitting in the car when she opened the video to see it was a blurry video of a girl lying on top of a guy. When she asked the media person what it was, she was threatened that they would leak the video. “I said, have you lost it? See how dirty the bedsheet is. I know when my last relationship was and with whom. This is impossible. She asked, ‘Should I release this?’ Just imagine they stooped to this level. Then I sat at the cybercrime unit for six to seven hours I finally tracked it down.”
The actor claimed that the video was from a Hindi porn clip, they took freeze frame of the girl in the video, from specific angles, blurred it and blasted it everywhere saying “Bhabiji ka MMS out”. She recalled, “Koi bhi bolta hai mera tha? sabhi bolte hain naa mera nahi tha. The watchman in my society is asking my mother, ‘has your daughter’s MMS been leaked?’ What do I say? Maine bahut kuch jhela (Everyone says the same thing, don’t they? ‘It wasn’t mine.’ But the watchman in my housing society was asking my mother, ‘Has your daughter’s MMS been leaked?’ What was I supposed to say? I went through a lot). When I was about to enter Bigg Boss, they even filed criminal cases against me, and I had to go into the show after getting bail. Just imagine the extent they went to and the level of harassment I had to endure.”
Explaining her decision further, Shilpa said that, coming from a legal background, she fully understood the seriousness of such allegations. She added that the dispute was eventually settled privately, following which she received her pending payments. As part of the agreement, both sides agreed not to discuss the matter publicly.
Team Analysis
After her exit from the popular sitcom Bhabiji Ghar Par Hain in 2016, Shilpa Shinde found herself embroiled in a long-running dispute with the show’s producers. The production team accused the actor of breaching her contract and behaving unprofessionally, while Shilpa maintained that she had not been paid her dues and had experienced harassment and a hostile working environment on the set. In 2017, she also lodged a sexual harassment complaint against producer Sanjay Kohli. The legal battle was later resolved through an out-of-court settlement.
Looking back on that period during a recent appearance on Bharti Singh and Haarsh Limbachiyaa’s podcast, Shilpa made a startling admission. She said that the sexual harassment complaint was not based on actual harassment and said she filed it because she believed she had no other way left to fight her case. “At that time, I filed the complaint because I felt I had no other option left. All doors were closed on me,” she said.
