Veteran lyricist and scriptwriter Javed Akhtar on Wednesday came out in support of filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani, who has been accused of sexually assaulting a former employee of his production company.

Akhtar described Hirani as one of the “most decent people” he has met in his time in the film industry. “After so many years if I am asked who are the most decent people you met in this industry over almost five decades, perhaps the first name that will come to my mind is Raju Hirani,” Akhtar tweeted.

Quoting the playwright George Bernard Shaw, Akhtar said “it is too dangerous to be too good”.

A number of Bollywood personalities, including producer Boney Kapoor, and actor Sharman Joshi had extended support to the director on Tuesday. “Rajkumar Hirani is too good a man to do something like this,” Kapoor had said.

Actor Arshad Warsi, who worked with Hirani in the Munnabhai movies, on Wednesday described the director as a “polite, nice and correct person”, PTI reported. “I find it wrong to condemn somebody without proper proof or investigation,” Warsi added. “I would like to know the credibility of the accusation. Till all that is clear, I feel it is not right to accuse someone.”

Warsi said he knows Hirani very well because of their many years of association, and has never felt that he is a “bad person”. The actor also urged others not to “jump to conclusions”.

Actor Raageshwari Loomba Swaroop also came out in Hirani’s support, The Times Of India reported. Swaroop said she has known Hirani for almost two decades and described the director as one of “the most cultured, refined and peerless” men in the industry.

“I’m not speaking as an actress cementing bonds, hence I speak with utmost honesty and with zero agenda here,” she said. “I speak as a family friend and, most importantly, as a woman.”

The director has denied the allegation and said he had expressed shock “when these allegations were brought to my notice about two months back”.