“Considering the young age of the accused and the promising future he has ahead of him, I urge the court to exercise compassion in its judgement.” Ram Jagadeesh’s directorial debut Court: State vs a Nobody begins with this statement which, without context, seems arbitrary and even unjust. The court is being asked to exercise compassion towards the accused because of his promising future. However, we soon find out the truth.
The Telugu courtroom drama, set in 2013, follows Jabilli (Sridevi Appala), a 17-year-old girl from an affluent family, and Chandrashekhar (Harsh Roshan), a 19-year-old watchman’s son. The plot revolves around their love story.
When Mangapathi (Sivaji), Jabilli’s formidable uncle who is considered the head of the family, finds out about her relationship with Chandrashekhar, he immediately disapproves and wants to get the boy arrested. So he hires a lawyer and falsely accuses the teenager of multiple crimes. Mangapathi has money and political clout, and Chandrashekhar is charged under the POCSO Act.
The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act was passed in 2012 to deal with sexual offences against children. Any sexual offense committed against a person under 18 years old falls under this Act. The Act is gender-neutral – it applies to both male and female victims, and the offender can be of either gender. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report for 2020-2021 shows that there was a 16.2% increase in crimes against children in India.
However, Court deals with an aspect of the law that has come under criticism from activists who work with adolescents and sexual crimes – the misuse of the law in the hands of patriarchal families who oppose consensual relationships between adolescents.
In Court, Chandrashekhar is denied bail and remanded to custody for 78 days. He is close to losing the case. This is when his friend tries to get advocate Mohan Rao (Sai Kumar) to take up the case and defend him. But when this fails, Mohan Rao’s assistant Surya Teja decides to step in. Priyadarshi Pulikonda’s subtle and nuanced performance as Teja drives the narrative forward.
An engaging courtroom drama follows as Teja tries to prove Chandrashekhar’s innocence. Mohan Rao’s advice – “The black coat is always about questioning” – helps Teja eventually prevail when he is at a crossroads.
The film skillfully captures the incessant need of patriarchal families to place the honour of the family on women and especially young girls. A study of 7,064 cases registered under the POCSO Act in Assam, Maharashtra, and West Bengal revealed that 23.4% (1,715) were ‘romantic cases’.
According to the POCSO Act, the age of consent for sexual activity is 18. So, if a person below 18 is involved in a sexual relationship, it is considered statutory rape even if it was consensual. As Teja points out in the film, the law does not differentiate between a middle-aged person exploiting a child and two adolescents who are more or less in the same age bracket exploring their sexuality.
Even before Mangapathi discovers the romantic relationship between Jabilli and Chandrashekhar, the film reveals his mindset. He lashes out when a young girl in the family wears a sleeveless dress for her birthday party and forces her to change into conservative clothing. He gets the father of a boy arrested just because the latter gave Mangapathi’s daughter a worksheet. His reasoning is: what if those watching assumed it was a love letter.
Mangapathi’s men are all around the town keeping an eye on the girls in the family, informing him if they even interact with a boy. This constant policing of their actions combined with societal constraints cage the girls and they are completely stripped of their freedom.
Nobody in the family is allowed to question Mangapathi, including Jabilli’s mother (Rohini), who is a single parent. So obsessed is Mangapathi with ‘protecting’ the family honour at any cost that he ignores her request to keep Jabilli away from the court case. At one point, he says, “If we win the case, we restore the family’s honour.” He believes that the case will serve as a warning to anyone else who thinks of approaching the girls in his family.
Court is far from being an exaggeration even if some liberties have been taken with the courtroom proceedings. In reality, there have been countless such cases, some even resulting in ‘honour killings’. An ‘honour killing’ is when a person is murdered for bringing supposed dishonour to their community, and is usually committed by a family member of the victim or a family member of the person s/he was in a relationship with. According to a report by the Dalit Human Rights Defenders Network (DHRDNet), honour is considered the ‘public or group recognition of moral worth imposed and sanctioned by an external social system, based on the adherence to norms, codes, or behaviours accepted or encouraged by that social system’.
Unlike other murders, ‘honour killings’ are viewed by society with a lenient and even celebratory lens. This is because in patriarchal societies, women are considered to be the property of their respective families and communities. Any challenge to this understanding is met with instant resistance and sometimes outright violence. It is usually people from marginalised social locations who bear the brunt of ‘honour killings’.
One such case was the 2018 murder of Pranay Perumalla in Telangana’s Miryalguda. Pranay, a 23-year-old Dalit Christian man, had married Amrutha Varshini, a woman from the dominant Vaishya caste. Angered by this, Amrutha’s father hired contract killers to murder Pranay. The young man was hacked to death in front of his five-month pregnant wife and his mother. Following this, Amrutha’s father was hailed as a hero by his community. Several social media pages celebrated the murder, saying the crime was justified since it was a father’s ‘love’ that had provoked him to commit the act.
There have been numerous such cases in our country, and it is perhaps because of this that Jagadeesh treads carefully in Court. Throughout the film, there is heavy emphasis on the fact that the two teenagers did not engage in any sexual act and that everything that happens is misunderstood by Jabilli’s family. The film shies away from exploring adolescent sexuality realistically. We also do not know Chandrashekhar’s caste identity, and the conflict is restricted to that of class. However, considering society thinks of him as a ‘nobody’, we can guess Chandrashekhar’s marginalised location.
Even if it plays safe in these aspects, Court depicts a misuse of the POCSO Act that could have led to the sentencing of an innocent man for a crime he didn’t commit. It opens up conversations about the extent to which the Act can be applied, and masterfully conveys the importance of every citizen knowing the laws and being aware of their rights and responsibilities. It also makes the important point that it is only when women recognise their agency and break out of familial and patriarchal constraints that we will see real social change.
Court is a compelling and meaningful watch, and a welcome change from mainstream cinema that tends to conform to social norms rather than question them.
The film is currently streaming on Netflix.
Sharanya Rao is a 17-year-old high school student in Pune. She is interested in pop culture and its intricacies. She likes analysing media through different lenses to gain a broader perspective on the world.
Views expressed are the author’s own.