Two women in Malayalam cinema have revealed that filmmaker Sajin Baabu, known for his critically acclaimed Biriyaani, had sexually abused them while they were relative newcomers in the industry. In an interview to TNM, the women said they might not have spoken out now if it wasn’t for a Facebook post that Sajin wrote lauding the Hema Committee report. The Hema Committee report that came out on August 19 had revealed that women in Malayalam cinema faced systemic harassment, and the two women who spoke to TNM were among those who deposed before the Committee. TNM contacted Sajin, who admitted that he had done wrong by the women. He also sent a lengthy explanation to TNM about his behaviour, detailing how sorry he was.
The survivors had shared with TNM their horrifying experiences after reading what they thought was a hypocritical post by Sajin.
On August 24, the director had posted on Facebook that while many men living in a patriarchal society, including himself, normalised the mistakes they made due to ignorance and social conditioning, there were others with power who used it to do “certain things” to those who don’t. “The Hema Committee report as well as the media, the government, and the public should be able to correct these practices and to make the men in cinema and the larger society aware of every mistake they have made,” he wrote, as part of a longer post.
“The post was triggering for me,” said one of the women, Alli*, who was a crew member in one of Sajin’s films. Since the film was being made on a low budget, a number of artistes were staying in a three-storey building together. The survivor was put in a room with Sajin’s girlfriend, she said. “On the first night, when the girlfriend was not there, he had come into the room on the pretext of getting his bag. He then locked the door and began asking me questions about working in the film.”
Alli said she was feeling nervous but answered his questions, when he suddenly came to sit on the bed. “He began touching my hands and moving his hands across my body, and I resisted and began to make noise. Hearing this, he suddenly said sorry and said something about trying to make me comfortable on the set, and left the room. After this, he’d find some reason to come to the room whether his girlfriend was there or not,” she said.
Alli had narrated her experience to another artiste on the set, who offered to help her if she wished to raise it as an issue, she said. But she did not want to do so then, and tried not to cross paths with him after that.
At a closed door meeting of the Hema Committee, Alli was shocked to hear a similarly harrowing experience of another artiste, at the hands of the same man. She broke down after the other woman, Kavitha*, narrated her account, that included a rape attempt and abuse.
Kavitha told us she had by then overcome her trauma, as the incident had happened several years ago. But when she narrated her experience at the meeting with a touch of sarcasm, she heard the sobs of Alli, and realised that this man was a “serial harasser,” she said.
“I was not even in the film industry at the time. I had just finished my studies and was looking for a job when a mutual friend introduced me to Sajin, to translate one of his scripts. I met him in Thrissur at the Sangeetha Nataka Akademi and began reading the script. He then suggested that I could read it calmly in a room nearby and repeatedly said that he would not come there,” she said.
But while Kavitha was reading the script, he came to the room and made an attempt to rape her. “I began to shout. He knew there were people around, and he began to apologise. But then, as I tried to pick my things and get out of there, he began to masturbate. I shouted again and he apologised again, and this would repeat. I somehow rushed out of there and went to the railway station, calling the mutual friend and telling him what happened while crying out loud all that time. I also told my friends in Thiruvananthapuram, and in the years that passed, many others,” Kavitha said.
Sajin admitted to TNM that “there had been mistakes” on his part, and that he had apologised to both the women. He claimed that he has spoken to them several times afterward, and that he also narrated the incidents to members of the Women in Cinema Collective.
“We have all grown up in deeply patriarchal societies, and have imbibed in us its values subconsciously. When our exposure to the world and its progressive values increases, some of us try to unlearn this conditioning and become better individuals. It took me a lot of time and medical intervention to get over this incident. It was only around 2018-19 that I was able to move past it. On my part, I know that I am trying to become a better person everyday, whether it is through my behaviour or my cinema,” he said.
Sajin then added that what happened was not just about conditioning. “Often it is also the power differential and lack of accountability that contributes to perpetuating such equations. Problematic behaviours have been normalised, and the hurt and trauma that women are subject to is often not even acknowledged. Which is why I truly believe that the Hema Committee report is going to be a historic document which will hopefully bring about a leap of change in women’s rights and safety not just in the Malayalam film industry, but also the entire country. I pray it is able to bring about a resolution to the afflicted persons. This is what I wished to convey through my Facebook post. I’m sorry that the post triggered the two women, but I truly believe in what I said in the post,” he said.
Alli told us that a while after the assault, Sajin had met her at a film festival and apologised to her. “He said that he had psychological problems. But you’d understand the difference when a person in a powerful position tries to take advantage of you,” Alli said.
Sajin had tried to apologise to Kavitha as well. “He met both of us together at a film festival, after we deposed before the Hema Committee. The apology seemed like a ploy, in line with building his image as this progressive political man making pro-woman films. He is intelligently showcasing himself as a progressive feminist, and even the apology is part of that. I don't think he behaves in this manner towards women who hold some kind of power. He does this to newcomers, which Alli and I were when this happened,” Kavitha said.
“It is this masquerade of putting up a progressive front that triggers me,” she adds. “He is talking about the Hema Committee and women’s issues in Kerala! I can’t tolerate the hypocrisy, the double standards.”
(With inputs from Haritha John)
* Names of women changed to protect their privacy