What’s Behind India’s Latest #MeToo Movement in Malayalam Cinema? | Sexual Abuse News

A series of allegations of sexual misconduct have rocked the film industry in the southern Indian state of Kerala, leading to a flurry of police cases and calls for a broader reckoning within the so-called Mollywood.

The latest wave of the #MeToo movement, which first started in 2017, erupted after the findings of a study — on issues faced by men and women in the film industry — by a government-appointed panel known as the Hema Committee were released on August 19. The report revealed widespread sexual abuse among other workplace violations against women working in the Malayalam film industry. Malayalam is the dominant language of Kerala.

Sexual harassment is “the worst evil” faced by women in the industry, the report, which runs to more than 200 pages, said.

What is happening in Malayalam cinema right now, what does the report say and what is on the horizon next?

Why was the Hema Commission established?

In February 2017, an actress was abducted and sexually assaulted by a group of men in a car while she was traveling in Kerala, on India’s southern Malabar Coast. The men filmed the attack on video.

In response to the incident, 18 women from the Malayalam film industry came together as the Women in Cinema Collective (WCC). Malayalam actor Gopalakrishnan Padmanabhan – better known by his stage name Dileep – was arrested in July 2017 for allegedly orchestrating the attack. He was released on bail after three months. The case is still pending in court.

Al Jazeera emailed Dileep’s lawyer, Raman Pillai, seeking comments on specific questions regarding the allegations against the actor and those in the Hema Commission report. Pillai did not respond.

In November 2017, acting on an appeal by the WCC, the Kerala state government set up the three-member Hema Committee, tasked with looking into issues faced by women and men in the industry. The committee comprised retired Kerala High Court judge K Hema, former actor Sharada and retired civil servant KB Valsala Kumari.

The committee gathered insights from male and female actors, make-up artists, cameramen and other crew members through online surveys and personal interviews. Videos, screenshots and photos were also collected as possible evidence. In addition, a member of the committee visited the filming of a movie that was released in 2019. This was done to study the environment on a film set.

What is the Hema Commission report?

In late 2019, the committee submitted its report to the state government. In late August 2024, a redacted version was made public, with the names of all victims and perpetrators removed.

The report’s late release was criticised by opposition politicians, including Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who said in August: “It is absolutely scandalous and shocking that the government has been waiting for this report for almost five years now.”

The government said the report’s publication was delayed because it contained sensitive information. “Justice Hema had written a letter to the government on February 19, 2020, urging them not to publish the report due to the sensitive nature of the information,” Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan was quoted as saying in August by local media.

But even without providing details, the report sent shockwaves across India with its revelations.

“It is not just about reporting on sexual violence, it also exposes the power dynamics of the industry and other forms of violations such as discrimination, exploitation and retaliation,” said J Devika, a feminist academic from Kerala.

What were the main findings of the report?

• “Denial of Women’s Human Rights in Cinema”: On several film sets, women do not have access to changing rooms or toilets. This, the report found, causes health problems, including urinary tract infections, and women on set “have sometimes ended up in hospital”.
• “Casting couch”: The report said that women in the industry, especially aspiring actresses, are pressured for sexual favours by actors, producers or directors in exchange for roles in films and other opportunities to further their careers. Some witnesses produced video clips, audio clips and screenshots of WhatsApp messages to support their claims. The practice is shrouded in euphemism. “‘Compromise’ and ‘adjustment’ are two terms that are well-known among women in the Malayalam film industry,” the report said.
• Online harassment: Several women and men told the commission that they were harassed and trolled in online messages and social media posts. This trolling can be sexual in nature, with actresses receiving threats of rape and sexual assault alongside unsolicited images in their inboxes.
• Contractual issues: Written contracts lack specific details about the nature of the scenes actors are expected to perform. Some actresses were quoted in the report as saying they were asked to do sexually explicit scenes that they felt uncomfortable doing, and that they were not informed in advance. Many women also do not receive proper compensation because of unclear contracts, the report said.

One of the recommendations in the report is the establishment of a judicial court that will function like a civil court and provide women with the opportunity to file complaints.

The government has not yet set up such a court, but has set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the flood of new allegations of previous sexual misconduct by actresses that have emerged since the report was published.

Stream of accusations

After the report was published, many more Malayali actresses came forward with allegations of sexual harassment and assault. Among them:

• Actress Minu Muneer on August 27 filed sexual misconduct complaints against seven actors, including Mukesh, who is also a state legislator from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which governs Kerala. He has denied the allegations against him and alleged that Muneer had earlier asked him for money and later tried to blackmail him. On August 27, local media quoted him as saying that he was happy about a transparent investigation and said, “This group, which is constantly blackmailing me for money, has now turned against me at this opportune moment.” Jayasurya, another actor accused by Muneer, has also denied the allegation.
• Sreelekha Mitra, an actress best known for her work in Bengali cinema, accused director Ranjith Balakrishnan of sexual harassment in 2009. The police registered a case against Balakrishnan on August 26. Balakrishnan has claimed that the allegations are false and said that he was seeing Mitra in the presence of a screenwriter and two assistants, according to Indian digital publication The News Minute.

The entire board of the Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA), headed by one of the biggest superstars of Malayalam film, Mohanlal, resigned after some of its members were themselves implicated in allegations of sexual misconduct.

The SIT, which has received an uncensored version of the Hema committee report, is now preparing for personal interviews with the actresses who allege intimidation in the report.

What now?

Activists are already frustrated by the government’s five-year delay in releasing the Hema Commission report, and are demanding that the names of the alleged perpetrators identified by the panel of experts be made public.

Devika said it was a “gross violation of the law of the land” to hide their identities, adding that “it is not usual that the accused are protected in this manner”.

She said more clarity was needed on how the tribunal recommended by the commission would operate, warning against a mechanism that could undermine other institutions dealing with sexual harassment complaints.

“Top-down structures undermine the credibility of the structures that already exist,” she argued.

Since 2013, Indian law requires every workplace with more than 10 employees to have an internal complaints committee to address issues of sexual misconduct in the workplace. However, in practice, the implementation of this law has been spotty.

In 2022, the Kerala High Court ordered film production houses to set up these committees. According to Devika, some of the committees are weak and ineffective. But the law also allows complainants to take their allegations to local grievance committees at the district level.

Despite their shortcomings, internal and district commissions are generally more accessible to women than a top-down tribunal, Devika argued. “The tribunal is seen as a supra-organ,” outside the film industry, she said. “Some of us really think that you are cutting off access to justice. Fewer women are likely to complain if such mechanisms are put in place.”

The need to set up a new tribunal, despite existing mechanisms meant to address cases of sexual crimes in the workplace, also raises a broader question, Devika said.

“How can we as Indian citizens say that the current law does not protect women just because they work in cinema?”

Following the publication of the report, the WCC has published solutions and recommendations on its social media pages.

Beyond naming and shaming

“After the report came out, the questions were, ‘Who is the perpetrator? Who are these men? Why are they being protected?’” said Nidhi Suresh, an Indian journalist who covered the 2017 case extensively for The News Minute.

She explained that actresses who came forward with public allegations after the report was published have lost their jobs.

This was echoed by filmmaker and WCC founder Anjali Menon. The Press Trust of India news agency quoted her as saying, “It is true that we paid the price of job losses when we spoke out, but over the last seven years we have consistently made our points and we now have immense support from the media, the legal community and the public.”

Suresh told Al Jazeera she understood the risks. If names of alleged perpetrators are revealed, the identities of victims could also be easily discovered, she said. “If they release the names of the perpetrators, it has to be done in a very responsible way,” she said.

In any case, Suresh said the movement that exploded after the Hema committee report and subsequent accusations by other women was about more than just naming and shaming perpetrators. What is needed, she said, is structural change in the way the film industry treats women.

“A conversation that happens a lot here is people comparing this movement to the Weinstein movement,” she said, referring to the movement that grew in 2017 when more than 80 women came forward accusing Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault.

The #MeToo movement in the Kerala film industry is not just about exposing sexual predators in the industry, she said, but also about reforming the way the industry is structured and how women are treated.

“It’s about trying to rethink a safer workplace culture.”