Mollywood #MeToo Top 10 Developments

1. The cases against Mukesh and Jayasurya are among nearly two dozen filed by police since a flood of sexual abuse claims against senior Malayalam actors. The allegations followed the publication of a report by a commission investigating sexual abuse in the industry.

2. Mukesh – who has also been removed from a state government panel set up to formulate policies on cinema – has denied Ms Muneer’s allegations. In a Facebook post this week, he accused her of blackmail, saying she approached him in 2009 and then again in 2022, when she asked for “at least Rs 1 lakh”. “But I am not ready to surrender…” he said.

3. Two others accused by Ms Muneer – M Maniyanpilla Raju and Edavela Babu – have also been charged with rape by police in Fort Kochi and Ernakulam (North), according to reports from Kerala. Ms Muneer had accused Babu of molestation in exchange for membership of AMMA, a Malayalam actors’ film organisation. M Raju blamed “vested interests”.

4. Filmmaker Ranjith Balakrishnan was the first to be charged in this wave of #MeToo cases, accused of sexual assault. Balakrishnan, who resigned as chairman of the state-run Kerala Chalachitra Academy, is accused of assaulting Bengali actor Sreelekha Mitra at his Kochi home in 2009 and sexually assaulting a male actor in 2012.

5. “Everyone knows about it (the sexual abuse and exploitation of women). It is not new… in this industry it is widespread. The problem is that it has been normalised,” Ms Mitra told NDTV.

6. Baburaj, an award-winning actor, has been accused of rape by a junior actor who wishes to remain anonymous at this time. She told NDTV that she too was lured to the senior actor’s house on the pretext of a film role and then raped. Baburaj has denied the allegation.

7. Also on Sunday, another prominent actor – Siddique – resigned as secretary general of AMMA, or the Association of Malayalam Movie Actors, after actor Revathy Sampath alleged that he raped her in a hotel room in 2016. Siddique has since filed a counter-complaint.

8. Senior actor Mohanlal on Tuesday resigned as the president of AMMA. Several members of the actors’ organisation’s executive committee have also resigned, claiming “moral responsibility… in light of allegations made by some actors against some members of the committee”.

9. Actress and film producer Sandra Thomas told News18 that she was humiliated in front of the Kerala Film Producers’ Association after she demanded better working conditions for women. “I stood there… with curious looks and smirks…” she said.

10. Meanwhile, in Bengal, where protests have been fierce following the rape and murder of a doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar Hospital, female actors have urged Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to set up a panel to probe similar allegations. 100 women, associated with the Women’s Forum for Screen Workers, have demanded safety at the workplace.

NDTV is now available on WhatsApp channels. Click on the link to get all the latest updates from NDTV in your chat.

Post a comment