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The Maradu police in Kerala booked a Malayalam film director and his aide on charges of raping a woman, the police officers said on Friday.
The accused has been identified as Suresh Thiruvalla, the director, and his aide, Vijith Vijayakumar.
According to the complaint, Suresh raped the woman, an assistant film director in the film industry, under the pretext of offering her roles and promising to marry her. The complainant alleged that she was also sexually assaulted by Vijayakumar.
Suresh has directed the films ‘Orma’ and ‘Naleykay’.
An officer at the Maradu PS said though the FIR was registered here, the case will eventually be probed by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) which is investigating a flurry of sexual abuse complaints against leading figures in the Malayalam film industry.
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Several actors, directors and technicians in the industry have been accused of sexual assault following the publication of the Justice Hema Committee report in 2017 after the 2017 actress assault case which cast a spotlight on the systemic sexual abuse against the women in the film industry. The report was released nearly five years after it was submitted to the government.
The landmark report on the working conditions of women movie professionals in Kerala, which was released on August 19, had said that women artistes and actors were routinely asked for sexual favours in exchange for opportunities, told to compromise, dealt with force exhibited by their male colleagues and threatened with bans if they attempted to sue. The committee report – originally 295 pages long – was cut short by 66 pages to redact the names and information of those who testified and others against whom allegations were made.
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After the report was released, several women actors, including a Bengali actress, went public with allegations of sexual harassment against some of the well-known faces of Malayalam cinema, including director Ranjith and actors Siddique and Mukesh.
On August 25, the Kerala government constituted an SIT, comprising top IPS officers, to probe the claims even as Siddique and Ranjith stepped down as general secretary of the Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA) and chairman of Kerala Chalachitra Academy, a state-run institution, respectively. Top Malayalam actor Mohanlal also quit as AMMA president and the 17-member executive committee of the influential body also resigned en masse, taking “moral responsibility”.
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