Alternative Justice

THE MALAYALAM movie star Nivin Pauly got a clean chit this week from the police in a rape case he had been accused in. It was by a wom­an he had never met. On the date that she gave for the assault, he could show he was elsewhere. He was among six the woman had accused and he didn’t know most of them. The police had earlier received the complaint against him but had not proceeded because they found no merit in it. Now they are once again saying the same thing.

The reason to file the case in between was the mood in the state. A report by a retired judge who looked into sexual harassment and work con­ditions of women in the Malayalam film industry had finally been released after being kept locked down for years. It had numerous details and first-person accounts of how women were exploited. Many prominent actors were named and cases filed against them. Soon, other women were com­ing forward until there was a media frenzy. It conjured up memories of the MeToo wave that had happened six years ago when Indian social media was rife with accusations as more and more women decided to out their harassers of the past.

Pauly gave a press conference im­mediately after the news broke, took questions calmly from a media that was already hostile towards the film industry, explained why the case was false and said that he would not relent until he had cleared his name. It is very difficult when celebrities or public personalities are involved to know where the truth ends and where the system is being managed, but he came across as authentic.

The episode signals a shortcoming in such movements. In the beginning, it takes extraordinary courage for a woman to relive her ordeal in public. Once, however, it gets traction and more women start doing it, the guard­rails break down and the volume of such charges shoots up. And then it requires just a handful of false accusa­tions for the legitimacy of everyone to come into question. The media, which so eagerly put out names of the accused, begins to be circumspect. The public, too, move on to whatever other issue their short attention span demands. Such trial by social media is also accompanied by the argument that because of the nature of the crime, the usual principles of justice, like the accused being innocent until proven guilty, should be ignored. There is no onus on the accuser, which leads to the foisting of false allegations.

The other flaw in such movements is that there are no degrees in the crime. Because it is essentially played out in the popular media, a rapist and a harasser are painted with the same brush. That is not how justice oper­ates, the reason penal codes have sec­tions and different punishments for crimes under a category. The wheels of justice are slow, creaky and faulty, but any other alternative is often worse.

#MeTooIndian Penal CodeMalayalam film industryNivin Paulysocial media