Daily harassment
In October 2015, the woman finally decided to tell Kashyap, Bahl's business partner, about the incident.
In the months following her return from Goa, the woman said, Bahl had taken to harassing her at work. He would often call her up on the pretext of asking her to do minor chores, even though she didn't report to him.
"I would hide at Phantom," she said. "I'd eat lunch alone. I'd talk to nobody. I'd attend no parties. I lived inside a shell whenever I went to the office. I tried to remain in touch and hang with friends outside of Phantom."
The worst part, she said, was seeing Bahl in the office everyday.
One day, she said, she was at the Phantom canteen when Bahl walked up to her and said, "You know, abroad they allow dogs everywhere. Here also, they allow dogs at a lot of places."
The woman said she stood silently as Bahl continued, "But what about you? With your fucked-up attitude, who will allow you anywhere?"
Bahl did not respond to HuffPost India's request for comment.
As the harassment continued, the woman resolved to speak to Kashyap—as she felt the most comfortable with him.
On 30 October 2015, five months after her trauma, the woman and Kashyap travelled to Bengaluru on work. In a ride to the airport, she told Kashyap the details of her encounter with Bahl.
The woman said Kashyap said, "I don't want to know this right now", but he promised to fix it.
Kashyap told HuffPost India he remembers the incident differently.
"I have a vague memory of it. I was super drunk and didn't quite process what she said," Kashyap said, adding that the failure of Bombay Velvet meant he was frequently inebriated. "At that time, I knew something happened, I didn't know exactly what."
The director said he now regrets not probing the issue further.
Bro-Code
In January 2017, the woman finally stepped away from Phantom. Kashyap had promised her that Bahl would apologise, she said. But from October 2015 to the month she resigned, he never did.
"All I wanted was an apology. An apology would have saved me from all the hell that I went through," the woman said.
Phantom Films had three releases in 2016—Udta Punjab, Raman Raghav 2.0 and a Gujarati film called Wrong Side Raju. Udta Punjab did well, and things were looking up again for Phantom Films.
The woman got busy with work—"It was going well and the work distracted me from everything"—but every now and then, something would trigger a memory of her trauma.
One particular incident stood out: in February 2016, Kashyap asked her to work with Bahl on a short-term commercial assignment. The assignment had come to Kashyap, but he passed it on to Bahl because he was busy and said Bahl needed the money.
"This made me realise that Kashyap wasn't thinking about me or the trauma I went through," she said, adding that she felt humiliated at having to repeatedly ask that Bahl apologise to her. "It told me that he isn't going to do anything about it. I had to leave."
Kashyap's girlfriend Shetty said Kashyap didn't know the specifics of the incident and from the time that he found out, he did everything to distance himself from Phantom.
Rumours
Something changed at Phantom in 2017: rumour had it that the four partners Kashyap, Bahl, Motwane and Mantena, who had once seemed inseparable, were drifting apart.
On 4 March 2017, the woman received a text message from Shetty.
"I'm not letting this go. I'm not taking an apology. I've had enough of this bullshit and people taking this lightly. I'm disappointed with myself for being so passive when you first told me in that hotel room. And I was disappointed with Anurag for not taking serious action."
The message, while welcome, came as a surprise. Shetty had known of the incident since at least 30 May 2016, when the woman told her about it.
Shetty corroborated this in an interview with HuffPost India, expressing guilt for not having acted promptly when the woman first shared the details of the incident with her.
"I'll admit that it has been a failure on our part. We could've done a lot better, much sooner," Shetty said.
In December 2016, Shetty told HuffPost India she was at a wedding in Coimbatore where several current and former Phantom employees said Bahl's behaviour had made them uncomfortable on multiple occasions.
Shetty said she came back from the wedding and refused to talk to her boyfriend, Kashyap, until he promised to fire Bahl from Phantom or deal with the situation.
As it turned out, firing Bahl wasn't an option: Bahl wasn't an employee at Phantom, he was a part-owner.
Kashyap told HuffPost India that Phantom's contracts are such that they don't have a clause to remove a partner over 'misconduct'. HuffPost India couldn't independently review the contracts.
But Shetty and Kashyap both told HuffPost India that they sat down with a team of lawyers who categorically told them they couldn't remove Bahl.
"We spent a lot of time working that out. Since there wasn't an FIR so we had no legal ground to fire him," Kashyap said. "It's entirely my failing that I didn't know how these contracts were made and I should've looked into it more clearly. I shouldn't be starting a company if I don't know how to run one."
If the woman were to file a police complaint, Kashyap told HuffPost India, there could have been grounds to remove him from the company. By March 2017, Kashyap said, "One thing was clear: we wouldn't allow Bahl anywhere near or into the office. He was barred."
At the time, Phantom had no internal complaints committee, no policy on sexual harassment and no formal avenue for survivors of sexual harassment to file complaints. In its place, the film production company responsible for some of Bollywood's most "path-breaking" movies had four influential men making unaccountable decisions based on opaque personal motives.
So the woman was suspicious when Kashyap suddenly reached out to her after years of silence and stonewalling.
"The issue was left in cold storage for months. I had moved on. And one day suddenly, he woke up and said he wants to set things right," the woman said. "It didn't seem right to me. Something seemed off. It felt like it wasn't been done for me but for some other gain."
At one point, for instance, Kashyap told the woman she had the power to decide Bahl's fate.
In a message dated 10 March 2017, reviewed by HuffPost India, the filmmaker wrote,
"There is a lot of livelihoods at stake, yet everyone is with you and want to do the right thing. You will decide the punishment and even if you sympathize , he will still have to go... we just don't want to be suicidal, that fuck it, let's kill Phantom.. we want to correct it and set an example."
"I had told them what he did to me. It had to be them to decide what the punishment should be," she told HuffPost India, explaining that she felt she was being manipulated by Kashyap to settle scores within Phantom Films. "Kashyap couldn't just bring it back so he could look self-righteous in front of his girlfriend."
Bahl versus Kashyap
In March 2017, nearly two years after the incident in Goa, the woman found herself at the intersection of Phantom Film's internecine struggles between the four founders.
On 10 March 2017, the partners at Phantom arranged a meeting between the woman Kashyap, Mantena, and Motwane. The woman agreed to attend the meeting after Mantena called her and told her that Bahl was finally ready to apologise.
By this time, Phantom Films was in complete violation of India's Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013.
While the act mandates that such complaints be handled by an internal complaints committee—presided over by a woman, with at least half the committee members being women, and including at least one representative from outside the organisation—the woman was questioned by Mantena who—the woman said—sought to chip away at the credibility of her testimony by asking her if she was drunk at the time, or if she had any conclusive evidence.
He also told her, the woman said, that he would not put out a statement supporting her if the media asked him questions.
HuffPost India sent Mantena a detailed questionnaire on his recollection of this meeting, but he is yet to reply.
The woman was jittery. "I could smell something wrong," she said.
Three days later, on 13 March 2017, a meeting between Kashyap, his girlfriend Shetty, the woman and her boyfriend turned into a nightmare when Kashyap and the woman's boyfriend came to blows.
Kashyap insisted that the woman denounce Bahl in the media, while the woman's boyfriend pointed out that Phantom Films had done nothing for two years and now expected the woman to go public without any guarantee that Kashyap or his company would stand by her.
The woman refused to cooperate and after several heated text exchanges between Kashyap and her, which HuffPost India has reviewed, she asked him to leave her alone and forget about the incident once and for all.
"I was disappointed in Kashyap. He knew everything," the woman said. "He had the power to do stuff. He could have if he wanted to. He didn't. And I don't think so I will never be able to forgive him for that."
Kashyap didn't deny this.
"We didn't handle it well," he told HuffPost India. "I cannot blame anyone but myself."
What happens to Bahl now? "People have already started distancing themselves from him. He's done," said Kashyap.
In April 2017, the month after the woman's meetings with Phantom, the Mumbai Mirror carried a brief story about the incident in Goa.
Bahl gave Mirror a lengthy comment defending himself:
"Nothing has happened. I am running the company. There is no complaint to HR and there is no Vishakha committee. I have heard about this particular lady you are speaking about and the Goa incident. She is not my employee. Yes, I am friends with her, we have worked together and there is a production job we have done together... but if she is feeling like this I would like to sit across a table from her and talk to her. I want to ask her if I have crossed a line, whether I have done anything to hurt her and if she feels that way I would like to apologise for it. I have known her for long. For two-and-half years she has never made me feel as if she is uncomfortable (around me). I have worked very hard to be the person I have become. I do feel a little victimised but I don't know what to do about that."
The Phantom vanishes
Last week, HuffPost India sent Bahl, Mantena and Motwane, Phantom's three other founders, detailed questionnaires asking for their responses.
Representatives for all three men stalled for three days. Then, at 1:28 am on Friday, 6 October 2018, three-and-a-half years after that fateful night in Goa, Kashyap took to Twitter.
"Phantom was a dream, a glorious one and all dreams come to an end. We did our best and we succeeded and we failed. But i know for sure we will come out of this stronger, wiser and will continue to pursue our dreams our own individual ways. We wish each other the best."
Phantom Films—the company that had brought Kashyap, Bahl, Motwane and Mantena wealth, power and influence—was no more.
"To me, the overnight split appears like a pre-emptive measure," the woman said, about the sudden dissolution of the company. "My heart really goes out for those people who didn't have anything to do with my case and will perhaps lose their job."
Bahl, Kashyap, Motwane and Mantena have enough projects on their plate. Bahl's next big film, Super 30, starring Hrithik Roshan, is slated to release early next year.
"What Bahl did to me that night in that hotel room in Goa has had a lasting impact. I am still healing. It has affected my relationships, my spirit, my social life, everything," the woman said. "I think twice before going out for a film-related event... but do I fear him? No. Not today. And I want to tell every young woman in this industry, it's never your fault. It's not your burden, it's not your shame."