Photo: Sonu Nigam alleges sexual harassment by journalist

Singer Sonu Nigam has accused a renowned film journalist of harassment after he rejected the latter's sexual advances.

In an open letter to the media, Nigam has stated that senior film journalist — Subhash K Jha — had asked him for sexual favours in return for publicity.

“He used to harass me with his homosexual desires to an extent that my family was affected. We all know that the film industry consists of many gays and homosexuals. Even I have many gay friends but they have never tried to come close to me because they know that I am not interested in it,” news website zeenews.com quoted the singer as saying.

Nigam alleged that had Jha regularly sent him "vulgar" text messages on his mobile and talked “nonsense on the phone”.

“In 2001, he proposed me and said that he loves me. He even misbehaved with me after getting drunk but later apologised in the morning. I even told him that you are Lataji’s friend and elder to me so please don’t talk such things with me as I’m not gay. But he still continued harassing me with his calls,” the singer was quoted by the website as saying.

Nigam claimed that when he did not comply with Jha's requests, Jha started fabricating reports about the singer to show him poor light.

“I’m not a fool that I don’t understand his intentions. I’m not a villager that I don’t know whatever is happening. I even told him about my girlfriends but slowly and slowly when he did not get any positive response from my end, he started criticising me in his articles and his feelings got bitter towards me,” Nigam was quoted by the website as saying.