A well-known Indian classical musician, a nephew of sitar maestro Ustad Vilayat Khan, has been charged with sexually assaulting a minor girl in the US state of Philadelphia.
NEW YORK: A well-known Indian classical musician, a nephew of sitar maestro Ustad Vilayat Khan, has been charged with sexually assaulting a minor girl in the US state of Philadelphia.
The case of 42-year-old Shafaatullah Khan, which came up in a court in Bridgeport on Wednesday, comes close on the heels of a Hindu priest being arrested on charges of groping two children in Texas.
Khan, a Pennsylvania resident who plays sitar, surbahar and tabla and teaches Indian classical music on a wide array of instruments, has been charged with multiple counts of corruption of a minor, indecent assault, and related sexual offenses, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
At the preliminary hearing yesterday, the girl, now 16, alleged that Khan, who had taught her keyboard lessons at his home in the fall of 2006 and the following winter, molested her repeatedly and made sexual comments.
The girl said that she told Khan in February 2007 to stop doing such things and he complied. She did not tell her parents about her allegations until a year later. After she did, she provided police with e-mails confiding the incidents to friends, according to a criminal complaint.
Khan was permitted to leave yesterday on his own, but Judge James Gallagher asked him not give lessons to minors and surrender his passport. Khan’s attorney Vincent DiFabio said that he was looking forward to a trial and that his client would be exonerated.
Khan, son of sitar and surbahar player Ustad Imrat Khan and nephew of Vilayat Khan of famous ‘Etawa gharana’, is featured on at least 16 CDs and has played in concerts throughout the world over the last two decades.
Other than the Royal Albert Hall in London and Great Hall of Kremlin in Moscow, he has also performed in Lincoln Centre in New York. At the invitation of University of Pennsylvania, he taught at its Department of South Asian Regional Studies for three years. Khan has been a US citizen since 1995.
He has lived in Montgomery County for at least 10 years, first in Ardmore and then King of Prussia.
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