A film producer and actor in Kerala has been booked for raping a budding actress over weeks, blackmailing her with an objectionable video and then revealing the identity of the purported survivor on social media.

The actress has also accused Vijay Babu, who is absconding, of kicking her in the stomach and spitting on her when she tried to stave off him off during her period.

Late on Tuesday, Babu, 45, went against court orders and named the survivor in a Facebook Live video in which he described himself as the “victim”, dismissed all allegations and threatened to file a defamation case against the upcoming actress.

Deputy commissioner of police V.U. Kuriakose told reporters in Kochi on Wednesday that a prima facie offence had been recorded and efforts were on to trace Babu and question him before initiating further steps like arrest. “Prima facie there is a case. But we can say anything further only after a thorough investigation. We are moving into the next step of tracing him to question him,” Kuriakose said.

The officer said the investigating team had recorded the statement of the survivor, whose mandatory medical examinations had been conducted. Kuriakose, however, pleaded ignorance about Babu’s location when the producer-actor went live on Facebook.

Babu has been booked under IPC Sections 376 (sexual assault), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), apart from being charged in a separate case for publicly naming the survivor.

Under his banner Friday Film House, Babu has produced several experimental films such as Philips and the Monkey Pen and the Aadu series and also financed Sufiyum Sujatayum that last year became the first Malayalam movie to be directly released on an OTT platform.

The survivor, who had worked in one of Babu’s critically acclaimed films, recalled her ordeal in a statement shared on Facebook by the Women Against Sexual Harassment collective on Wednesday. The actress said she knows Babu for a few years during which she acted in a movie produced by him and he won her trust by providing advice, but then sexually exploited her.

“Whenever I was conscious, I denied consent for engaging in sex. But for him it was never an issue and disregarding my protest he has raped me several times during the past 1 ½ months. He intoxicated me with alcohol and always used to force me to take happy pills but I denied,” she alleged in the statement.

Babu, who is married, allegedly offered to marry her whenever she tried to escape from his clutches. “Each time I tried to run away from this trauma, he would come after me with false promises of marriage. There are also several witnesses to the trauma he has put me through.”

The actress accused Babu of kicking her in the stomach when she refused sex during period. “One day for denying sex he stamped forcefully on my stomach when I was on my periods. He spit sputum on my face and forced himself on me against my will. I was too traumatised to realise what was happening at that time but today I realise I was subjected to rape. He even forced sex when I was on periods, was never concerned about my physical health. He was like a monster to me,” the statement said.

“He has recorded a nude video of mine and threatened me with consequences and also threatened my life. I fear for his blackmail and for my safety,” she alleged.

Babu denied all allegations and named her on social media, defying Supreme Court orders against disclosing the identity of a sexual assault survivor. “There are laws against revealing a survivor’s name. But I am revealing her name since I am the victim and not her,” he said during the Facebook Live session, often twirling his moustache in an apparent expression of machismo.

In his defence, he claimed to be in possession of over 400 screenshots of the actress’s messages to disprove her allegations. “She came to meet me, saying she was going through depression. I have all the messages she has sent me since then,” the producer-actor said, claiming he never had any relationship with the actress.

The Women in Cinema Collective, an organisation formed after the kidnap and sexual assault of an actress in Kerala in 2017, urged the film fraternity to take action on the allegations against Babu and reminded him that only a court can say who is a victim.

“The right to arbitrate about who is a victim rests with the judiciary and not anyone else. An accused’s public shaming of a complainant is deplorable and punishable by law. Flaunting his presence online with such an act without turning himself into the judicial process seems to be an attempt to mock the judicial system,” the WCC said in a statement.

Superstar Dileep had been arrested in the 2017 case on the charge of plotting the kidnap and rape of the actress. He is out on bail.