Haven't withdrawn sexual harassment charges against Prathap Suthan, says Jaya Prasad

Reeling under the #metoo heat, Bang in the Middle's (BITM) Managing Partner and Chief Creative Officer Prathap Suthan has claimed “acquittal” of sexual harassment charges levelled by a former colleague, Jaya Prasad. In an interview given to afaqs earlier this week, Suthan claimed innocence in the matter.

The agency, in a tweet, also asked BestMediaInfo.com to take off an earlier report that carried Prasad’s account based on a medium post that she had written. The report also carried Suthan's version of the incident.

In the wake of the recent tweet by BITM asking us to remove the earlier story, we reached out to Prasad to cross-check the facts.

Prasad categorically told BestMediaInfo.com that she still stands by the charges and was sexually harassed by Suthan.

Prasad, who's currently General Manager at Serviceplan India, said that she would continue with her fight and her current agency, friends and family would be supporting her.

No one reached out to me, and acquittal on what basis, asks Prasad

Suthan’s business partner and Co-founder of Bang In The Middle, Naresh Gupta, on December 12 tagged BestMediaInfo.com and a journalist of a B2B platform in his tweet declaring “acquittal” from harassment charges against Suthan based on a clean chit given by Sandhya Menon.

Menon is a Bangalore-based journalist who supported the #metoo movement by tweeting various accounts of harassment.

Also @BestMediaInfo and @AshwiniGangal https://t.co/2N1Ik6WhpH

— Naresh Gupta (@googlegupta) December 12, 2018

Considering that Menon had no authority to acquit someone of harassment charges, BestMediaInfo.com ignored that tweet until the official twitter handle of Bang In The Middle started putting pressure on us to take down the story, which was based on Prasad’s medium post and also prominently carried Suthan’s denial.

We would request @BestMediaInfo to take down the story on @patsuthan after knowing that the accusations were a lie. That’s the least you should do. #fakemetoo

— Bang in the Middle (@Banginthemiddle) December 17, 2018

The basis of this over-enthusiastic tweet was a story based on Menon’s statement giving a clean chit to Suthan. This was carried by afaqs, which readily believed Menon's statement without doing any due diligence or cross-verifying with Prasad. The agency, BITM, also did not reach out to Prasad to independently verify whether Menon's statement was correct.

“No one has reached out to me yet and I still stand by my statement. I don't know what is the basis of this acquittal,” Prasad told BestMediaInfo.com.

Prasad said that she was in touch with Menon through Twitter DMs. “The conclusion that Menon drew from the conversation was her own and I have not withdrawn the charges,” she said.

BestMediaInfo.com has seen the screenshots of the conversation.

Since Prasad hasn't withdrawn the charges, we would not be taking down any story.

Info@BestMediaInfo.com