Impunity And Inaction: The Aftermath Of The Hema Committee Report

A photo emerged from a 2017 meeting in Kerala with the cheerful faces of women in Malayalam cinema surrounding the Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. It became a sort of telling picture of a new movement on the horizon. Members of the Women in Cinema Collective pressed in that meeting the need of a committee that could study issues of women in the film industry. Unfortunately, the hope that this picture brought to women in Malayalam cinema seems to be waning.

After the initial hullabaloo, very little seems to have changed since the release of the Hema Committee report in Kerala last August.  The report had rolled out in the midst of an uproar over its four–and-a-half year delay. When it finally saw the light of day, massive portions had been chucked out, swallowing names and identities for the sake of confidentiality.

The Hema Committee report was a detailed study of the issues plaguing Malayalam cinema, sought for by a group of women in the field after a brutal sexual assault on one of them took place in February 2017. The government of Kerala agreed to form a committee, hired a panel, and entrusted retired Justice Hema to chair it. For two years, the committee did the legwork, interviewing woman after woman in the industry, and men too, before filing the report in December 2019. 

It took repeated efforts—including pleas of Right to Information, public criticism and an order from the State Information Commission—for the government to release the redacted version in August 2024. Television channels blared with the findings and the social media erupted. Most of the attention went to the part of the report that exposed sexual harassment in cinema, which had until then been whispered about or brushed away as mere rumours. Emboldened by the public outrage, woman after woman began speaking up or  going to the police with the horrible experiences they had been through. Names of prominent men in the industry featured in First Information Reports. Associations of Malayalam cinema—bodies of actors and technicians—that took time to react to the report, had their spokespersons in a soup when they were named as accused.

In the same month that the Hema Committee report came out, the government hired a Special Investigation Team to deal with the FIRs that came out of it. However, in less than a year, 35 of these cases were dropped, reportedly due to lack of evidence or the survivors’ unwillingness to proceed with them. 

“The fact that many of these women did not want to seek legal redressal does not mean that there wasn’t a problem. A lot of them had gone before the Hema Committee to share their experience so that it could be understood. But some of them did not want to go to the police. They may have been cases that happened long ago and there may have been some kind of closure,” says Bina Paul, renowned editor and a key member of the Women in Cinema Collective, which had formed in the aftermath of the 2017 sexual assault of a young actor in Kochi.

The formation of the WCC did not go down well with the existing larger body of actors in cinema, called the Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA). A year after its formation, three members of the WCC and the survivor of the 2017 attack would quit the AMMA, after its leadership, headed by superstar Mohanlal, decided to bring back actor Dileep, a key accused in the assault case. The women, some at the peak of their careers, would steadily lose opportunities for refusing to toe the line, for speaking out against powerful men.

In fact, one of the findings of the Hema Committee report was about a power group of men, who decided the way things were run, including who got to work in the film industry. After the report came out, a young actor who spoke out about her sexual harassment alleged that the man who attacked her claimed he was powerful and she could do nothing. Based on her statement, one of the first cases was filed against actor Siddique, who held the post of General Secretary of the AMMA. Only days before, he had welcomed the Hema Committee report on behalf of the association. While he quit, and soon the others had to follow suit when more names came out, none of them are yet to face a trial or irreparable damages. Among the several accused are actor Mukesh, a legislator of the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist), filmmaker Ranjith, who had held the post of chairperson of Kerala Chalachitra Academy, renowned actors like Jayasurya, Manianpilla Raju and Balachandra Menon.

Even the Internal Complaints Committee formed by the AMMA in 2022 was dismantled within months of its formation, when the members resigned, unhappy with the way the association had handled a complaint of sexual harassment against noted producer and actor Vijay Babu. 

There is a nexus formed by men working in different departments of the industry, film producer Sandra Thomas had revealed when the Hema Committee report came out. Following this, she was expelled from the Kerala Film Producers Association. She also alleged losing work opportunities and filed a case of criminal intimidation against B Unnikrishnan, director, producer and general secretary of the Film Employees Federation of Kerala (FEFKA). “I have to say that things have got worse after the report came out, because now these men know that only so much can happen – a few cases filed, and some of them dropped. Nobody had to go to jail. Only the government could do something about this, could make an intervention,” Thomas says. 

One of the key takeaways of the report is the formation of a film policy. The government had formed a committee for it, headed by filmmaker Shaji N Karun, who passed away in April. Several meetings took place between the stakeholders and the government panel on what should be the focus of the policy. The WCC asked for a zero-tolerance policy and a regulatory body that addresses all the legal gaps. 

The move for policymaking translated into a legislation process, with the High Court appointing an amicus curiae to help the government draft a law for workplace safety in the entertainment industry. Mitha Sudhindran, the amicus curiae, submitted two reports—a draft and a second report—by January 2025, highlighting the need for a regulatory body and the registration of all stakeholders.

Six months later, little has come out of it. Sudhindran says that the state has planned for a conclave in August, which will include all the stakeholders. "They said they will bring the draft out within three months after the conclave. Regarding the investigations by the SIT, the court is directly monitoring the progress and the matter is listed for June 25."

According to Sudhindran, among the immediate impacts of the Hema Committee report was the deterrent effect it had on film sets and the setting up of an Internal Complaints Committee in accordance with the POSH Act (Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act). “But this has often proved difficult owing to the temporary nature of the film sets. A senior woman actor who is in the IC may not be required for every scene and might have taken up another project, so she need not be available for the purpose of a complaint,” she explains. “We have been suggesting using the local committee (used when IC is not available at a workplace) to play the role of the IC in such cases. But for all of this to take effect, we need the new law to come in place,” she adds.

Members of the WCC have been disappointed by the delay in the film policy formulation. When news of the cases being dropped by the SIT came out, actor Parvathy Thiruvothu made a post critical of the government’s delay in policymaking. Parvathy has been one of the most vocal members of the WCC, who too had quit the AMMA after a particularly insensitive comment was made by an AMMA office bearer about the survivor actor. 

“Filing FIRs was a necessary process. But there are other things also that had to get done, and we would expect greater will. Why is it taking so long to form the policy, to have the consultation on forming a tribunal that was suggested? Why aren't those FIRs which were actually filed not moving forward? We need a gender sensitive policy that ensures security on sets and equal opportunities, among other things,” Paul says. Hinging the blame on the survivors for not proceeding with the cases and questioning the validity of the Hema Committee report are the wrong approaches, she adds. 

It is not difficult to understand why women may not want to proceed with their cases. When Siddique, accused of sexual harassment, submitted his anticipatory bail plea, it was poured with victim-shaming material, using a number of her social media posts to portray her as a person capable of ‘vitriol and profanity’. The court called it unwarranted and uncharitable. 

Sandra Thomas, who has been subjected to a lot of online abuse after her complaint against B Unnikrishnan, says her experience was proof of why women were not keen to proceed legally. “The SIT was very good, we could all directly approach Poonguzhali (IPS officer and nodal officer for cases related to Hema Committee), but afterwards, when I filed a complaint [with the local police] against the online abuse, it was not the same,” she says.

She had allegedly even received death threats from two production controllers after criticising their work in an interview. Voice clips of these were recently put out, bringing the focus back on the complainants in the Hema Committee report. “All that happened was that the victims were even more victimised and the accused remained safe,” she says. 

All hope now rests on the conclave and the policy that the government is to put together. However, it remains to be seen whether legislative action will actually translate into structural upheaval around issues that affect women within the Malayalam film industry.

Cris is a feature writer based in Kerala and likes to think what she writes about people and culture and happenings around her are full of wit, if not utterly grave.