Kerala High Court on Thursday ordered cinema production houses in the state to set up internal complaints committees at film units so that women professionals can air any grievances about sexual harassment.

The division bench of Chief Justice S. Manikumar and Justice Shaji P. Chaly passed the order while hearing a PIL filed by the Women in Cinema Collective (WCC), an association of women cinema professionals from the Malayalam film industry, seeking such committees in industry bodies like the Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA).

The court ordered the formation of the committees in keeping with the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, commonly known as the POSH Act, since each film unit is an establishment that must have such a mechanism where 10 or more women are employed.

The court said: “So far as the film industry is concerned, the production unit is the workplace of an individual film and therefore, each unit would have to constitute an Internal Complaints Committee, which alone can deal with the harassment against women in contemplation of the provisions (of the POSH Act).”

The WCC was formed in 2017 by a group of women cinema professionals to address the void created by what many felt was an inadequate response from the AMMA, the premier industry body, after a top actress was kidnapped and sexually assaulted in a moving car earlier that year, allegedly at the behest of Malayalam cinema superstar Dileep.

The AMMA was found wanting in backing the survivor after Dileep was arrested and charged as one of the accused in the kidnap-and-assault case. He is out on bail after spending 85 days in judicial custody.

Another bench of Kerala High Court on Thursday said it would not stay the crime branch probe against Dileep and others for allegedly conspiring to kill and threaten officials investigating the 2017 actress assault case.

In its petition filed in 2018, the WCC had contended that associations like the AMMA had not constituted internal complaints committees as mandated by the Supreme Court in the Vishaka case and under the POSH Act.

The high court verdict has been widely welcomed by cinema professionals who, however, said the committees should have been in place even without a judicial order.

“This is a big relief, but it is sad that a court order is needed to form internal committees in the Malayalam film industry that came into being 94 years ago,” WCC member and filmmaker Didi Damodaran told news channels.

“I see this verdict as a strong reply to the stubbornness in the film industry against implementing a law that makes it mandatory to have such internal cells in any place where 10 or more (women) work.”

Filmmaker Anjali Menon said: “The industry should ensure the court order is implemented properly. It is quite sad that we had to push so much to do the right thing.”

The matter came up in the Assembly soon after the court verdict, with K.K. Rema, the lone MLA of the Revolutionary Marxist Party that is a constituent of the Congress-led United Democratic Front, slamming the Left government for not releasing the Justice K. Hema committee report that studied sexual harassment in the Malayalam film industry.

But culture minister Saji Cherian, who handles the Kerala State Film Development Corporation, explained that the report cannot be released since it contains personal experiences of actresses who deposed before the committee.

“Justice K. Hema had asked the government to keep the report confidential since it contains personal experiences of film actresses,” he informed the Assembly.

The minister said a date had been fixed to discuss the committee report and the way forward with film bodies including the WCC, Kerala State Women’s Commission and the department of social justice.

Tolly

There is no specific internal complaints committee in Tollywood for women professionals but there are various guilds or forums like the West Bengal Motion Picture Artists’ Forum and the Federation of Cine Technicians and Workers of Eastern India that deal with and address all kinds of grievances.

“I consider it a progressive and positive step that Kerala High Court has instructed the production houses in their region to form internal complaints committees regarding sexual harassment at workplace,” said filmmaker Saptaswa Basu.

“However, we do not have a similar body in our film production circuit, and if a person or worker has a grievance, the formal procedure is to report to their respective forum or guild and then lodge a formal FIR.”