Poonam Pandey on Raj Kundra’s arrest: ‘They threatened to leak my personal stuff’

Poonam Pandey, who has a legal history with arrested businessman Raj Kundra, has said that she was threatened to sign a contract with a firm he was associated with, after which her phone number was leaked in retaliation.

Raj was arrested in connection with the production and streaming of pornographic content.

Raj Kundra was taken into police custody on Monday night after being booked under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Information Technology (IT) Act. He has been remanded to police custody till July 23.

To a leading daily, Poonam said, “I was threatened and forced to sign a contract which stated — I have to shoot, pose and look a certain way according to their will or else, they’d leak all of my personal stuff.”

She continued, “When I wasn’t in favour of signing and decided to terminate the contract, they leaked my personal mobile number along with messages like, ‘Call me now, I will strip for you’ on the app. I still remember, after that, I started receiving calls from all over, not in dozens but thousands, at odd hours, asking me for explicit services. People started sending me pornographic images and videos. I even left my home in fear that something bad will happen to me. It felt so scary.”

Poonam Pandey urged others who’d experienced something similar to come forward, and acknowledged that if something like this can happen to a ‘known’ person such as herself, then others could be in grave danger of being exploited. Raj had distanced himself from the matter, claiming that he’d sold his stake in the company in 2019.

Previously, after Raj’s arrest, Poonam had said that her thoughts were with his wife, Shilpa Shetty, and their kids. Shilpa is set to make her acting comeback after more than a decade with this week’s Hungama 2.