I am ready to face these cases in court: Lyricist Vairamuthu on #MeToo allegations

Well-known lyricist Vairamuthu, who has won the National Award a record seven times, has hit back at those who levelled sexual harrassment allegations against him in the wake of the #MeToo movement.

In a video, Vairamuthu said, “The allegations that have been levelled against me are all completely false. These allegations have been made with ulterior motives. If they are true, those involved in it are free to file a case against me. I am ready to face these cases in court. After having intense consultations with senior lawyers and intellectuals during the last week, I have gathered and collated undisputable 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.”

Even as Vairamuthu issued this video statement, Chinmayi Sripaada, who has been at the forefront of the #MeToo movement in India and who was among the first to allege that Vairamuthu had harrassed her, responded by saying in an interview to a television channel that she and the other women who had levelled allegations against Vairamuthu were considering filing a case against the lyricist.

Meanwhile, she also replied with a tweet that read, "Mr Vairamuthu should take a lie detector test. Enough said."

Apart from levelling allegations against Vairamuthu herself, Chinmayi has also been retweeting some of the allegations that other women have levelled against the lyricist.

One of the messages that Chinmayi tweeted on behalf of a woman who wanted to stay anonymous 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 on the pretext 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 prey 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 [sic]."

Chinmayi also tweeted 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 [AR] Rahman.

"His eyes were all over my mother looking at all the wrong spots. A week later, he called me to ARR'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," the anonymous survivor said.