'Took me years to realise it', says Swara Bhasker as she recounts sexual harassment incident

Actress Swara Bhasker on Friday said that she was 'sexually harassed by a director', but it took her years to realise what exactly had happened. Swara hasn't named anyone, but added that harassment happened at work and director was being "predatory."

"It took me six to eight years to realise when I heard someone else talk about ir experience of harassment at a panel discussion like this. I was like God, what happened to me three years ago was actually sexual harassment at workplace! I never realised it because like you said, I escaped. Because person did t touch me and I mand to ward it off," Swara said during sidelines of an event, reports PTI.

"I would just tell myself that this director is being... whatever, but that is t full truth. director was t being an idiot or... he was being a predator," she added.

In 2017, Swara had first opened up about being harassed by a filmmaker during an outdoor shoot and had told Mumbai Mirror that "sexual harassment is a universal phemen because fundamentally it is about power or rar misuse of power."

Recounting horror of being stalked and harassed by director,  Veere Di Wedding actress, who was "fairly new" in industry at that point, told Mumbai Mirror, "He stalked me during day and called me through night. I was asked to go to his hotel room on pretext of discussing scene and would find him drinking. During first week itself, he started talking about love and sex and one night, arrived in my room, drunk, and asked to be hugged. It was scary."

At event, Swara also said that she wasn't able to recognise pattern of harassment or behaviour because "as part of our culture a girl child is t taught to recognise a predatory behaviour for what it is."

"re is so much of culture of silence, around sexuality in India, around issue of sexual harassment, actually t just In India, everywhere around world that we are just going through are lives without recognising it properly. We just recognise discomfort," Swara said, PTI reports.

Several people from industry, including actress Tanushree Dutta, have opened up about ir #MeToo accounts, in which some of top artistes have been named and shamed. Swara Bhasker was among first celebrities to have voiced her support in favour of Tanushree Dutta.

"First of se things is completely inhospitable and hostile society and a culture that actively or sub-consciously enables predators... We should use this moment to t just talk about one predator that got caught and got glamourised," Swara said

"But we should also talk about culture that enables se predators to reach position of power y do. So, it's also a question of making ourselves aware of many things that go into legitimising predatory behaviour," she added.

Swara Bhasker was last seen in Veere Di Wedding, for which she was brutally trolled for a masturbation scene she featured in. She currently features in web series It's t That Simple.