Call this the power of the internet or whatever you want, but the social media backlash has led All India Bakchod founders, Tanmay Bhat and Gursimran Khamba, to take a leave from the popular comedy company. This comes after the crackdown on popular comedian Utsav Chakraborty. Several women claimed that he had misbehaved with them. One of them even approached AIB about the same, but no action was taken, and Utsav continued to work with the company. AIB Collaborator Babu Haabi Accused of Rape.

Despite apologising on social media, and clarifying their stand through well-worded statements, AIB continued to face the backlash. Three days after the controversy surfaced, the company has released another statement revealing that Tanmay and Gursimran will not be a part of AIB until further notice. Read the statement by the HR below.

"We have been closely monitoring the sequence of events on social

media around the allegations against AIB and also against our

Co-founder and CEO, Tanmay Bhat. We cannot overlook Tanmay’s role and in light of this, he will be stepping away from his association with AIB until further notice. This implies that Tanmay will not be involved with the day to day functioning of AIB or in any other manner.

We have also just been appraised of the allegations against Gursimran Khamba on social media. At this point in time, these allegations pertain to a private matter, and he has released a statement of his own about the same. However, as an organisation, we believe that it would be prudent to place Gursimran Khamba on a temporary leave of absence until we have more clarity on the matter.

We understand that disconcert of any kind adversely affects the work culture and creates an unsafe space for our employees. Nobody should have to work in an environment such as that, and we hope to enable measures to establish our commitment to creating a gender sensitive workspace. We are in the process of consulting various experts to ensure that our work culture incorporates sensitivity, inclusivity, respect and fairness.

As mentioned, at this time, both of our senior partners are immediately stepping away from all business at AIB. Truthfully, we do not know what this means for the future of AIB or whether there is one. In the interim, Ashish Shakya, Rohan Joshi and other senior team members will work towards being able to answer that question over the next several months.

Vidhi Jotwani

Head - Human Resources"

AIB is not the only company going down in the wake of the #MeToo movement in India. Popular film production company, Phantom Films, has also shut shop, moments before a scathing report was carried by HuffPost where it was revealed how Anurag Kashyap continued to work with alleged sexual offender Vikas Bahl.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 08, 2018 04:37 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).