Gauhar Khan paid to get slapped?

Over a month after he was detained by Mumbai Police for slapping and molesting actor Gauhar Khan on the sets of the TV show India's Raw Star, accused Mohammad Akil Malik has allegedly told a TV channel that the incident was staged and the actor had paid him for the publicity stunt. According to a reports, the accused has been interviewed by a vernacular news channel where he has said that the entire incident was planned like a film script and Khan had promised to find him a role in Salman Khan's ‘Dabangg 3’, if he agreed to slap her in front of the audience and help her garner some limelight.

Akil, who was in jail for nearly a month, is out on temporary bail for seven days.

Several tweets doing the rounds dismissed Khan's outrage and seemed to believe the accused's version of the story instead.

Currently it's a classic he-said, she-said. The man, according to most media reports, claimed that he had met Gauhar Khan on 28 November at Reliance Studios, where she had hatched the plan with him. Khan has refuted the claims, saying she didn't know the accused. She said, "What this man is claiming is a clear attempt to get away from the heinous crime he committed. It’s absolutely bogus and a very poorly staged and filmy story obviously recommended by people who believe that our law will let him get away with such baseless stories."

After declaring that the entire incident was staged, the man tells the reporter that he didn't even know Gauhar Khan before November 28. Then he says, "On November 28, I had gone there, I had some stage show. But the show got cancelled." The reporter doesn't ask or the man doesn't specify, where he went for the 'stage show', what role he had there, why it got cancelled and who were the organisers of the show.

Then he says, "Then at 12, 12.30 pm, Gauhar Khan gets done with her work and came out. I walked up to her and told her, 'ma'am I am a big fan of yours'. I requested her. Finally, I told her, 'Madam, get me some work in a film'."

He seems to suggest that he had a long conversation with Khan which ended with him asking for work in a film. Notice he doesn't say that Khan solicited him or even knew him before he sought her out at some set. Unless Khan was feeling particularly generous to this man or was struck with the idea of a publicity stunt at the mere sight of him, it's unclear why a fairly popular showbiz personality would spend so much time chatting with a man she doesn't know at all.

Akil then says that he turned up on the sets of India's Raw Star on November 30 at 7.30 am. "Then Gauhar Khan came in at 8.30 am. She stopped her car. Then I reminded her that I was Akil and that she had asked me to come last day. She then asked me to get into the car. Her driver was there. Then she told me the plan and said that I will get work in ‘Dabangg 3’, he said.

Akil doesn't say that Khan was in touch with him over the phone or via any middle man or messenger. And in fact needed to be reminded who he was.

Akil then justifies his act by saying, "When you are promised a role in a film with a star like Salman Khan, you don't think what the consequences of slapping a woman will be. You just do it. I thought that Madam is asking me to hit her, encouraging me, so how does it matter if I hit her?" He goes on to say that Khan had promised to pardon him in front of the police and that way, he would not run into a long term legal hassle by hitting her.

The man sums up with the following lines: "My mother has spent so much money on getting me out. I will say that I have been used. She has used me. And if people have any delusions about stars, they should learn from me. This is what people are like in Bollywood," he says dramatically, smartly dodging the reporter's question about his profession or what he does for a living definitively. If there is one thing that we can credit Akil with after watching the video, that is intelligence. It's spectacular how he feeds into popular perceptions about publicity-hungry celebs and contrasts it with the vulnerability of a star-struck common man making an undeniable case for his innocence. One thing we cannot hold Akil guilty of, especially after watching him narrate the 'plan' with flourish and dramatic rhetoric is gullibility. The courts will decide the rest.