Just days after the Malayalam actor who was abducted and allegedly abused in Kochi returned to work on the sets of her upcoming film, a Facebook page, called Pilla Pukulu, reportedly claimed that it possessed a video of the abuse she faced.
Sunitha Krishnan, the co-founder of Prajwala, an organisation that works with survivors of sexual abuse, brought the matter to the attention of the Supreme Court on Monday. Sunitha had approached the apex court after receiving nearly 200 videos of rapes from the survivors, and had demanded an agency with pan-Indian jurisdiction to investigate them. The SC had, in 2015, entrusted the CBI with a probe into the issue.
During a hearing in this case, Sunitha drew the attention of the court to the “poor systems in place to review” posts in other languages on FB, pointing out that a majority of child pornography and proliferation of rape videos gets carried on in various Indian languages. As example, she informed the court about the Pilla Pukulu page’s post about the actor.
Soon after Sunitha approached the apex court, the post in Tamil and the page it appeared on disappeared from Facebook. The post appeared at a time when the police investigation team is yet to trace the videos of the abuse. In her complaint, the actor had stated that the accused had taken photos and videos of her being abused.
The investigating team, on Monday, went to Wagamon, a tourist hill-station in Idukki district, to track down evidence in the case. The police team went to Wagamon, based on a statement by key-accused, Sunil Kumar aka Pulsar Suni, that he had stayed in a hide-out at Wagamon after fleeing Kochi. Suni had reportedly fled to Coimbatore from Kochi after the incident, from where he moved to Wagamon.
In a case that shocked the Malayalam film industry and Kerala society, the well-known actor was abducted by a group of men, including her then current and former drivers, and allegedly abused in a moving vehicle in Kochi on February 18. For six days after the incident, the police struggled to track down Pulsar Suni, who managed to escape the police dragnet and reach the court of the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate of Ernakulam to surrender. However, before he could surrender, he was arrested.