It’ll be two years on December 31 since the Justice Hema Committee submitted its report to the Kerala government on the issues faced by women in the Malayalam film industry. But the panel report still remains a secret with the Kerala government refusing to make it public. 

The Hema Committee was formed in July 2017, months after a woman actor was sexually assaulted in a moving car in Kochi. There were murmurs in the film industry that someone powerful was behind the crime. As more stories started tumbling out on how unsafe women were in the film industry, a few from Mollywood came together to form the Women in Cinema Collective (WCC). The WCC, which is made up of prominent names like Manju Warrier, Parvathy, Bhavana, Anjali Menon, Geethu Mohan Das, Vidhu Vincent, Rima Kallingal, Remya Nambeesan among others, met Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in May 2017. They presented a memo to Pinarayi urging the  government to address gender disparity and employment conditions in the Malayalam film industry.

The Justice Hema Committee met men and women from the Malayalam film industry. Many women TNM spoke to said they confided in the committee and told them instances of sexual and mental harassment. 

So why is the Hema Committee report a secret? Was Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan never serious about helping WCC and other women in the film industry? TNM's Anna Isaac explains. 

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