Guru at Kathak Kendra arrested after 23-yr-old raises compliant
Pt Ravi Shankar Upadhyay, elder son of Pt Birju Maharaj , a noted pakhawaj player and a guru at the capital’s Kathak Kendra, was arrested for alleged molestation after a 23-year-old student of the institute registered an FIR at Chanakyapuri police station.
Kathak Kendra is an affiliate of the Sangeet Natak Akademi. Purported CCTV footage of the incident has been handed to the police by the director of the institute. The woman, who has been learning Kathak at the institute for 11 years, is under the tutelage of Pt Jai Kishen Maharaj. The dance students at the institute have to earn one of the exam credits by learning a percussion instrument. The student began learning from Upadhyay about two years ago.
She has revealed that the Guru has started doing inappropriate touch “whenever I’d touch his feet, as is the custom”. She said that she “stopped touching his feet and would touch the ground and do my pranaams”. She further added that this was followed by some obscene messages, which she didn’t reply to.
He then clicked a photograph of me, which I asked him to delete,” she alleged, adding that he then grabbed her and started behaving inappropriately. She alleged that “as a reflex, I pushed him and ran away to the washroom, where I just cried there.
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