Parineeti Chopra | Photo Credit: Instagram

The MeToo movement has now hit close to home and the Indian women are not shying away from naming and shaming their alleged sexual predators. While many prominent personalities including Nana Patekar, Alok Nath, Vikas Bahl, Rajat Kapoor and Kailash Kher have been accused of grave sexual misconduct and harassment, other actors, too, are opening up and extending support to the accusers.

Parineeti Chopra, who has been vocal about disparate issues on social media, spoke exclusively to ZoomTV and expressed her anger and disappointment over the growing list in the wake of MeToo movement. She even urged women to name and shame anyone who has ever violated them, assaulted them or harassed them.

She said, “I want every woman out there to come out and name those b*******. Name them and shame them. How dare they have a normal life after doing this with you, how dare they have daughters, how dare they have wives, how dare they have careers and money in their bank account. They better not! Because you ruined my life. Oh man, I am going to ruin yours now. So I want every woman out there to come out and they shouldn't be scared because there are good men out there who are going to stand by them.” (Also read: Arjun Kapoor on Phantom Films' dissolution: Anybody who takes advantage of their power is going to fall)

She also shared that sexual harassment is perhaps the worst thing to ever happen to someone and if any of it had ever happened to her, she wouldn't have been able to go long without speaking about it. She lauded the women for being courageous and sharing their stories out in the open. “God forbid if it ever happened with me, I wouldn't have lasted 2 hours without speaking about it. There are women who are speaking about it after 10 years, 20 years. To live with that, I don't think I will have a career, I don't think I will be able to work. I can't work with a stomach ache let alone such a thing to have happened. It's literally the most private thing in your life to be physical, to be intimate with someone and that too, be either raped, to be assaulted, to be alone in a room with a man trying to force himself on you – I can't think of something worse. I don't think death is worse, I think this is worse.”

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Parineeti also shared that someone had asked her 5 days back if this would be a start of India's MeToo movement and to that, she had said, I hope not. “Because that would mean there are so many more stories out there, there are so many women out there who have stories to tell. And 5 days later we have lost count of how many women have come up and how many men have been accused. Literally, every two hours a new name comes up and that's so sad. That's so sad that there are so many men who have been accused and so many different women per man, I really didn't know it was so bad. Pandora's box is such a scary term, it means it's limitless. Are they really that many creative women who were working with a smile on their face knowing that this was their reality a few years ago I can't believe it.” (Also read: In New York for medical treatment, Rishi Kapoor is reading about India's MeToo movement – see photo)

She made no qualms in accepting that she and his Namaste England co-actor Arjun Kapoor have had some sort of associations with most men who have been accused in the past couple of days and that thought alone is shocking for the actor. She said, “I have been telling my friends.. I have been more than shocked. These are the people I have hung out at their houses, I have had private one-on-one moments with them where we have discussed lives, careers and personal lives and I did not know that this was the reality of so many men.”

Parineeti went on to say, “We have had relationships with all the men that have been named, literally all the men – some sort of association with them. Which is why this is scarier - I don't know who to trust. I know that the kind of person I am I don't think anyone can do this to me but that's probably my mistake. Because all these women probably thought they could trust these men and they were violated. It's so scary that there exists this universe today and it exists in such a beautiful film industry of ours where we give inspiration, hopes and dreams to the entire world and this is the reality of our industry. I am only speaking for our industry. There's nothing to say I am just so proud of all these women that despite their wounds, they are coming out there and speaking up. There's no other way.” (Also read: Sandhya Mridul recalls how Alok Nath used to harass her by screaming his lungs out - 'I want you, you're mine')