The special investigation team (SIT) constituted to investigate the “me-too” disclosures of allegations of sexual exploitation in the Malayalam movie industry assembled at the State Police Headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala on Tuesday (August 27, 2024).
The team will likely prepare a road map for the highly complex and socially sensitive investigation, which could draw a galaxy of top stars, producers and directors into its centre and potentially put them at risk of severe legal jeopardy.
Harrowing first-person accounts of “coercive” sexual acts at workplaces, unwelcome sexual comments and advances at film sets, and at least one alleged instance of trafficking a junior woman artiste to a producer for sex emerged on social and mainstream media last weekend, triggering public protests and strident demands from Opposition parties for justice.
The scandal drew ruling the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government into its muddy vortex, prompting the administration to constitute the special team compromising four women IPS officers.
Law in motion
At least eight women, including aspiring actors and scriptwriters, have gone public with their startling accusations against top industry figures.
They also drew a grim picture of a workplace culture where sexual submission was allegedly a prerequisite for film assignments.
The women also highlighted dismal working environments for less privileged women actors and technicians, including a lack of cloakrooms, toilets, secure accommodation and safe commutes.
On Tuesday, the “wronged women” set the law into motion by filing detailed police complaints, prompting law enforcement to file an FIR in at least one case in Kochi.
Notably, the survivors told the media that the recent publication of the damning findings of the Justice K. Hema Committee report, which probed “pervasive” sexual exploitation, casting couch culture, patriarchy and misogyny faced by women in the entertainment industry, encouraged them to seek justice after years of self-doubt and trepidation.
CM’s assurance
They said Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s assurance at a press conference last week that the government would act on specific complaints stiffened their resolve and helped them overcome the fear of reprisal and ostracisation to seek justice, albeit belatedly.
A few complainants said some at the apex of the movie industry had further spurred them into decisive action by attempting to punch holes in their stories.
Some industry spokespersons had brought up the belated nature of the complaints as negatives and asked what prevented the women from approaching the police at the time of the alleged offence.
The industry figures also sought to air conspiracy theories, portraying the survivors’s statements as name-and-shame campaigns and extortion bids to blackmail top stars.
SIT contacts victims
Some aggrieved persons said women IPS officers had contacted them on Tuesday. A complainant told reporters that the officers were empathetic and supportive. “The officers acknowledged the risks we took to come forward finally. They seemed to understand that powerful cliques in the industry had robbed us of our agency to lodge police complaints until now,” she said.
Not an open-and-shut case
A senior official familiar with similar sensational investigations said the current probe was anything but an open-and-shut case. He said painstaking fact-checking will likely follow empathetic listening.
Given the behind-time nature of the offences, the police would have to get a fix on dates, locations, and records of financial transactions, including receipts, to build a timeline for effective prosecution.
Survivors’ contemporaneous statements to friends, text messages, e-mails, personal journals, e-mails, and social media accounts might help the investigators build a watertight case. The investigation might entail questioning actors and technicians involved in past film projects, some dating back a decade or more.
Another officer said if the first-person accounts were anything to go by, the instances of sexual exploitation, use of sexist language, misogynistic behaviour and assault reported by the survivors showed a definite pattern of criminal behaviour.
Team members
State Police Chief Sheikh Darvesh Saheb chaired the meeting. The team members are H. Venkatesh, Additional Director General of Police, Crime Branch, Inspector General of Police, Sparjan Kumar, DIG Ajitha Beegum, SP, Crime Branch Headquarters, Merin Joseph, AIG Coastal Police, G. Poonkuzhali, SP, Aishwarya Dongere, AIG, Law and Order, V. Ajith, and SP, Crime Branch, S. Madhusoodhanan. Some officers attended the close-door conference online.
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