‘Grooming process’ sessions turned into sexual submission.
AB Wire
WASHINGTON, DC: Bollywood choreographer Shiamak Davar, 53, has been sued by two former male students in Canada for sexually abusing them during training sessions.
According to the lawsuit filed by 40-year-old Percy Shroff and 33-year-old Jimmy Mistry in British Columbia Supreme Court, Canada, Davar, who was their dance teacher and spiritual guru at VRRP Spiritual Learning Group, abused them for several years, misusing his power and authority in both the institutions.
The celebrity Bollywood choreographer, who is also the trainer of many Bollywood stars including Shahid Kapoor, runs dance institutions in six countries, including in Canada and the United States. It’s called the Shimak Davar International.
Davar responded to the lawsuit, denying all the allegations against him. He also added that the allegations are cooked up to tarnish his “his character, reputation and affiliated organisations”.
He further wrote that he is not a spiritual guru or a leader of VRRP but is just a ‘custodian’ of the spiritual organization and if Shroff and Mistry thought the other way, it is their personal view.
According to the lawsuit filed by Mistry and Shroff, they both enrolled in Shiamak Davar’s Institute of the Performing arts in Mumbai at the age of 17 and 16, respectively, and both of them moved to Canada after being selected into the core group of Shiamak’s dance company.
Mistry alleges in the lawsuit that the members of the dance group were subjected to months of bizarre training in the name of “grooming process”. These sessions were used by Shiamak to force his students into “sexual submission”.
He further alleges that Davar used to touch him and other boys in the most inappropriate ways and made it a habit to take male dancers to his residence, ask them to lie with him in the bed and stroke his body.
Interestingly, Mistry says that he didn’t even knew that he was being exploited because Davar had “created and environment in which his physical interactions with young male dancers and students became the norm”.
Meanwhile, Shroff, who is now openly gay, says that Davar made sexual advances in most forceful ways and used to start off conversation about being “that way” when he was not even aware of what is it being a gay.
Shroff explains how Shiamak used to having sex with young students.
“I said Shiamak, you need to stop because these are your dance and spiritual students who come to you for advice,” he said.
Davar denied all these allegations and wrote in a letter that he has never indulged in “inappropriate sexual relations” with any of his students. He also ridiculed charges of “sexual grooming” and forceful spiritual conversions.