Police in Kerala's Maradu have filed a rape case against actor and ruling CPIM MLA M Mukesh based on a complaint by fellow actor Minu Muneer, who has also accused actor Jayasurya of sexual harassment. The charges in each case are non-bailable.
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The cases against Mukesh and Jayasurya are among nearly two dozen filed by the police since a flood of sexual assault claims against senior Malayalam actors. The allegations followed the release of a report by a committee inquiring into sexual abuse in the industry.
Mukesh - who has also been dropped from a state government panel to formulate cinema-related policies - has denied Ms Muneer's allegation. In a Facebook post this week he accused her of blackmail, saying she approached him in 2009 and then in 2022, when she asked for "at least Rs 1 lakh". "But I am not ready to surrender..." he declared.
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 assault in exchange for membership in AMMA, a Malayalam actors' film body. M Raju blamed "vested interests".
Filmmaker Ranjith Balakrishnan was the first to be charged in this wave of #MeToo cases; he was charged with sexual assault. Balakrishnan, who quit as Chairman of the state-run Kerala Chalachitra Academy, has been accused of assaulting Bengali actor Sreelekha Mitra at his Kochi home in 2009, and sexually abusing a male actor in 2012.
"Everyone knows about it (the sexual abuse and exploitation of women). It's not new... in this industry, it is rampant. The problem is it has been normalised," Ms Mitra told NDTV.
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 she too was lured to the senior actor's home, on the pretext of a film role, and then raped. Baburaj has denied the charge.
Also on Sunday another prominent actor - Siddique - quit as General Secretary of AMMA, or the Association of Malayalam Movie Actors, after actor Revathy Sampath said he raped her in a hotel room in 2016. Siddique has since filed a counter-complaint.
Senior actor Mohanlal on Tuesday quit as President of AMMA. Several members of the actors' body's executive committee also quit claiming "moral responsibility... in light of allegations made by some actors against some of the committee".
Actor and film producer Sandra Thomas told News18 she had been humiliated in front of the Kerala Film Producers' Association after demanding better working conditions for women. "I stood there... facing prying eyes and smirks..." she said.
Meanwhile, in Bengal, where violent protests have taken place over the rape and murder of a doctor at Kolkata's RG Kar Hospital, women actors have urged Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to set up a panel to probe similar claims. 100 women, associated with the Women's Forum for Screen Workers, have demanded safety at the workplace.
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