Kubbra Sait says she was sexually abused as a teen by family friend and no one knew: ‘He told me not to call him uncle’

Kubbra Sait has revealed in her new book Open Book: Not quite a Memoir that she was sexually abused as a teenager. The actor spoke about the abuse she endured at a young age in order to save her family from being ‘destroyed’. She wrote in the book that it was many years later that she told her mother about how she was abused in her home, ‘under her nose’. Kubbra also said her mother recently apologised to her, decades after she the abuse. The abuse went on for two-and-a-half years by a family friend, whom she calls ‘X’ in her book. Read more: Kubbra Sait reveals why she publicly apologised to Makarand Deshpande in a bar full of people

Sharing her traumatic experiences in the book, Kubbra wrote, she was only 17 when she was embroiled in the ‘greatest tragedy’ known to her. She mentioned regularly visiting a Bangalore restaurant with her family, when the owner became close to both her and her brother, Danish. The actor said he even helped their mother with her ‘financial woes’. Kubbra said that soon after his ‘help’, the man started sexually abusing her. He also insisted that she should not call him uncle.

“When Mumma sighed at the reprieve that cash provided, I sighed too. Just then, a hand slid to the back seat of the car where I was sitting and slid up my dress. X, who was no longer my uncle, smiled as he rubbed my thigh. I was numb in that moment… He started frequenting our home, and Mumma would laugh with and cook for him. In front of her, he would kiss my cheek and say, ‘Oh my Kubrati, you’re my favourite little one’. Although uncomfortable, I kept quiet,” read an excerpt from Open Book: Not quite a Memoir by Kubbra Sait, shared by Times of India.

Further explaining how she was sexually abused for the first time, Kubbra said, X took her to a hotel, where he stroked her face, before kissing her lips. She said she was ‘shocked and confused’, but could not utter a word. “This was not supposed to happen, but it was happening. I should have screamed, but I could not. I should have run for help, but I was shell-shocked. The kiss grew. He convinced me it was what I wanted, that it would make me feel better. He kept repeating it until I felt deafened, and then he unbuckled his trousers. I was unsure of what exactly was happening, but I remember thinking, I am losing my virginity. It was a big deal, but it was also my shameful secret,” Kubbra wrote.

Since the incident, she wrote X, who was married and had a child – in the years that he sexually abused Kubbra, he went on to father a second child – ‘grew like a virus’ in their home. If Kubbra resisted him, he would stop taking her mother’s calls, she wrote. Her mother, Kubbra said, was oblivious to everything happening between X and her daughter, and would berate the actor for supposedly fighting with X, when he refused to help the family. Kubbra further wrote that she was being sexually abused, and no one in her close perimeter ‘could even tell’.

Kubbra, who also wrote in her book, ‘life isn’t a fairy tale’, further shared that X threated her family by saying ‘it would destroy us’ if she ever told her family about her sexual abuse. The actor said she believed every word he said, and would probably not have done anything differently had she been dealt the same cards, today. She said in that moment, her mind and soul ‘felt dead’.

Kubbra rose to fame as Kuku in Netflix’s hit series Sacred Games. She also ssta