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Actors and directors in India’s Malayalam movie industry face sexual assault allegations, including rape
New Delhi — Police in India’s southern state of Kerala have opened investigations into allegations of rape against several popular movie stars from the region’s Malayalam language film industry. Cases have been registered against some of the industry’s biggest names after female actors started speaking out in a new manifestation of the MeToo movement triggered by a damning government report that revealed a culture of sexual exploitation in Kerala’s entertainment industry.
The sexual assault allegations have rocked the south Indian film business — which is separate from the Mumbai-based, Hindi-language film industry known as Bollywood — amid a wave of national outrage over the brutal rape and murder of a female doctor in the eastern city of Kolkata.
Kerala police have opened at least 10 formal investigations into alleged sexual misconduct, ranging from reports of rape to harrassment, against members of Kerala’s film industry, including directors Vineeth (who uses only one name), Ranjith Balakrishnan and VK Prakash, and popular actors Siddique and Jayasurya (who also use only one name), Edavela Babu, Maniyanpillai Raju and actor-politician M Mukesh.
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Producer Noble Jacob and online movie reviewers Alain Jose and Santhosh Varkey have also been named among those under investigation over the accusations received by the Kerala police.
The cases were filed on the basis of 16 complaints received by the police so far, the force said Thursday. Kerala Police Inspector General G Sparjan Kumar, who heads the Special Investigation Team formed to probe the allegations, said a separate team would investigate each complaint.
According to the case registered against director Vineeth, he stands accused of raping an actor whom he’d promised a role in a movie. The alleged rape is said to have taken place in April at the female actor’s house.
Actor Jayasurya has been accused of groping a coworker on the set of a movie in 2008.
Neither Vineeth nor Jayasurya have spoken publicly about the allegations.
Siddique, who has been accused of raping an actress at a hotel in 2016, stepped down Sunday from his role as the General Secretary of the Association of Malayalam Movie Artists.
Director Ranjith has been accused by a female actor of sexual misconduct. He stepped down on Sunday from his role as the chairman of the Malayalam industry’s Kerala State Chalachitra Academy.
Both Siddique and Ranjith have denied the allegations against them.
ARUN CHANDRABOSE/AFP/Getty
A female actor accused actor-politician M Mukesh of forcibly entering her hotel room and raping her in 2013. The woman has filed sexual abuse complaints against Jayasurya, Maniyanpilla Raju and Edavela Babu, as well. Mukesh has called the case a bid to blackmail him and said he will take legal action against the accuser.
The allegations of rape and sexual exploitation in Kerala’s movie industry started surfacing after the state’s High Court ordered the release of a formal report carried out on behalf of state authorities.
The Justice Hema Committee Report was authored five years ago by a panel formed to examine women’s safety issues in the film industry, following the abduction and sexual assault of a leading female actor in February 2017. It was only released weeks ago upon the court’s order.
The 290-page report, parts of which were redacted to conceal the identities of survivors and those accused of crimes, called the Malyalam-language film industry “a mafia of powerful men” where sexual harassment of female artists was “rampant… unchecked and uncontrolled”.
“Many in the industry are made to believe that all women in the industry get into the industry or are retained only because they have sex with men in the industry,” the report says. “Men in the industry make open demands for sex without any qualms as if it’s their birthright. Women are left with very little options but to oblige — or reject at the cost of their long-awaited dream of pursuing cinema as their profession.”
“The experiences of many women are really shocking and of such gravity that they have not disclosed the details even to their close family members,” the report said.
TRENTON, N.J. — Democratic Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver has defeated Republican small businessman Carmen Bucco in a contest in New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District that opened up because of the death of Rep. Donald Payne Jr. in April.
McIver will serve out the remainder of Payne’s term, which ends in January. She and Bucco will face a rematch on the November ballot for the full term.
McIver said in a statement Wednesday that she stands on the “shoulders of giants,” naming Payne as chief among them.
She cast ahead to the November election, saying the right to make reproductive health choices was on the ballot as well as whether the economy should benefit the wealthy or “hard working Americans.”
“I will fight because the purpose of politics and the purpose of our vote is to give the people of our communities and our nation a bold voice,” she said.
Bucco congratulated McIver on the victory in a statement but said he’s looking forward to the rematch in November.
“I am not going anywhere,” he said in an email. “We still have a second chance to make district 10 great again!”
Who are LaMonica McIver and Carmen Bucco?
McIver emerged as the Democratic candidate in a crowded field in the July special election. A member of the city council of New Jersey’s biggest city since 2018, she also worked for Montclair Public Schools as a personnel director and plans to focus on affordability, infrastructure, abortion rights and “protecting our democracy,” she told The Associated Press earlier this summer.
Bucco describes himself on his campaign website as a small-business owner influenced by his upbringing in the foster system. He lists support for law enforcement and ending corruption as top issues.
The 10th District lies in a heavily Democratic and majority-Black region of northern New Jersey. Republicans are outnumbered by more than 6 to 1.
It’s been a volatile year for Democrats in New Jersey, where the party dominates state government and the congressional delegation.
Among the developments were the conviction on federal bribery charges of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who has denied the charges, and the demise of the so-called county party line — a system in which local political leaders give their preferred candidates favorable position on the primary ballot.
Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, who’s running for Menendez’s seat, and other Democrats brought a federal lawsuit challenging the practice as part of his campaign to oust Menendez, who has resigned since his conviction.
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Sean “Diddy” Combs at same Brooklyn detention center that held R. Kelly, Sam Bankman-Fried, other high-profile inmates
A second judge refused to grant bail to Sean “Diddy” Combs on Wednesday and he could remain in federal custody at a Brooklyn detention center until his trial for sex trafficking charges. Combs joins other high-profile inmates, such as singer R. Kelly, fallen cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, rapper Ja Rule —even Al Sharpton served a brief stint— who were held at the same federal detention center.
Notorious for its horrible conditions —inmates won a $10 million class action settlement after enduring frigid conditions during an 8-day blackout in 2019— the waterfront industrial complex, MDC Brooklyn, houses 1,200 inmates.
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Violence and corruption have long plagued the facility; U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown of the Eastern District of New York wrote the detention center had “dangerous, barbaric conditions” in a recent sentencing opinion. Two inmates were stabbed to death in recent months and several correction officers have been convicted for smuggling contraband and accepting bribes.
Combs joins a list of high-profile personalities that have landed at the MDC Brooklyn, partly because the city’s other federal detention center, MDC New York, closed in 2021, also due to horrible conditions. The disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in his cell there in 2019. “Numerous and serious” instances of misconduct among corrections staff gave Epstein the opportunity to kill himself, a subsequent federal watchdog investigation found.
Kelly sued the federal detention center in 2022 for wrongly putting him on suicide watch after his sentencing. Kelly sought $100 million because he said the detention center knew he wasn’t suicidal after he was convicted in 2021 for racketeering and violating the Mann Act, which bars transporting people across state lines for prostitution.
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Former crypto billionaire Bankman-Fried survived on bread, water and sometimes peanut butter when he was in the MDC Brooklyn, his attorney said, because the detention center continued to serve him a “flesh diet” despite requests for vegan dishes.
Ja Rule stayed at the MDC Brooklyn for a brief time before being released after serving most of his two-year sentence for illegal gun possession. Most of his prison time was spent in a state prison in New York.
Sharpton served a 90-day sentence in 2001 and went on a hunger strike for protesting the U.S. Navy bombing of the island of Vieques, in Puerto Rico.
Combs was taken into custody on Monday and according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday he was charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution.
His attorney Marc Agnifilo told CBS News, “It’s impossible to prepare for a trial from where he is,” after a first federal judge denied Combs bail on Tuesday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky agreed with prosecutors who argued the hip-hop mogul, who is accused of using his business empire as a criminal enterprise to conceal his alleged abuse of women, is a flight risk and poses an ongoing threat to the safety of the community.
Agnifilo said the part of the detention center where Combs is being held is “a very difficult place to be.”
contributed to this report.
