The Utsav Chakraborty-Mahima Kukreja saga continues to unravel. On Saturday, Aditi Murti, one of Utsav’s accusers, retracted her allegation on the social media platform. She shared screenshots of the conversation she had with Mahima Kukreja during the whole controversy last year.
Murti said that she was ‘unnecessary cruel’ about a ‘very minor’ thing. She also said that Utsav did not try to harass her or send her anything inappropriate or encourage her to do anything illegal.
Alright. So around a year ago, I sent this to Mahima regarding @Wootsaw. I’d like to talk about this and set the record straight. I was unnecessarily cruel about a very minor thing. Utsav did not try to harass me/send me anything inappropriate or do anything illegal. pic.twitter.com/vN75Oe1MEd
— Aditi Murti (@adt_txt) December 7, 2019
In the screenshot, Aditi Murti can be seen telling Mahima that when she was 17, and Utsav’s username was @SatanBhagat, he had sent his number to her randomly. And when she asked him publicly what was it about, he told that he was ‘just curious’. Then a week later, she received texts from him saying that the earlier messages were from his friends. She says that she found it extremely weird since her age was displayed publicly.
Mahima, for her part, when she is told that Aditi has a ‘story’ about Utsav, tells her “Please tell me. Please.” After Aditi has finished recounting her experience, Mahima tells her, “He was trying to slide into your DMs knowing you’re underage? God this guy is a serial creep.”
Aditi Murti in her apology said that she had believed the allegations that were being made against Utsav Chakraborty and she pointed out the incident ‘as a way of doing the right thing’. However, she did not anticipate the scale of the outrage or that his life would be ‘destroyed’ as a consequence. She made the thread so that Utsav’s ‘name is cleared regarding my allegation’.
The allegations she made during the Me Too movement were not worth putting out and it ‘diluted’ the movement, Aditi Murti said. She also says that she believes Utsav was telling the truth when he said a few weeks ago that a few of his friends had pranked him by sending his phone number to random women on the internet.
Aditi Murti said, “I would like to reiterate that @Wootsaw (Utsav’s username on Twitter) did not do anything illegal, did not send me any lewd messages, nothing. I was sent his number and some prank texts by his friends from his account, and I have enough reason to believe it.”
She added, “I believe I tried my best to only state that it is odd or weird to receive random texts, and that my incidence carries no heft because neither can I prove it and nor was it serious. However, media hype, misreporting and exaggerations spun this into something horrific and wrong.” Aditi Murti also took full responsibility for her own actions and apologized to Utsav for it.
The whole controversy was reignited when an audio clip went viral on social media where Utsav Chakraborty and Mahima Kukrej are heard having a conversation where Kukreja’s sister threatened Utsav with legal action if he released screenshots that could prove his innocence. Later, another longer audio clip emerged where Mahima Kukreja can be heard telling Utsav that the movement will be derailed if both of them got involved in a legal battle.
Following the release of the audio clips, Utsav Chakraborty initiated a crusade against Mahima Kukreja on social media. Mahima then accused Utsav of maligning her reputation. After that, Utsav accused Tanmay Bhat of AIB fame of lying when Tanmay said that the AIB had confronted him about his behaviour. Bizarrely enough, Utsav seemed to suggest that he had sent an unsolicited d*ck pic because he is ‘socially clumsy’.
