The phenomenon of casting couch has taken Odisha’s entertainment industry by storm in the wake of the arrest of choreographer lubun, and now police have got into the act of digging out the murky behind-the-scenes happenings in the industry.
The police administration has formed a special team to investigate the casting couch allegations and plans to raid several studios and question some big names. The police administration also plans to deploy the special team in shooting spots and use an intelligence team with female members to source information.
lubun was arrested for raping and shooting the nude videos of the act with an aspiring actress. Some NGOs have joined hands with the police to counsel girls to encourage them to tip off the police if they come to know of any incident of casting couch around them. The police have also assured to keep the names of the victims secret to encourage them to report such incidents.
The police have already possessed a few more leads to the murky affairs in the industry. The police have found the involvement of a man named Michael who was apparently hand on gloves with lubun in bringing girls from red-light areas of Kolkata for shooting and abusing them for sexual pleasure.
The involvement of another man named Rajaji Mishra has also come to the fore. Mishra used to lure girls from Baleswar and Baripada and send them back after satiating his lust and offering them small roles in TV shows.
The names of two senior film actors popped up recently when they were accused of misbehaving and verbally abusing a couple of Plus 2 girl students from Ganjam, who were participating in an audition being judged by the duo. The judges verbally abused the girls and evicted them from the audition after they took objection to their inappropriate touches and lewd gestures.
An NGO has sent a notice to the TV channel to rein in the judges following the incident. “The girls most often don’t share such incidents with their families,” said Abantikia Mahali, a volunteer working for an NGO.
‘If casting couch doesn’t stop, there would be an endless number of girls who would destroy their lives while falling for the charm of the silver screen,” commented Rani Dash, a volunteer from an NGO from Niladri Vihar, Bhubaneswar. While some actresses are forced into this, several others have it out of their choice. While some are willing for it to get their first break, many do it for fresh leases of their professional career. The casting couch exists not only in the movie world but also in the TV industry.
In a recent case, a senior TV actress had been asked to make the compromise in order to bag the lead woman role in a film. Upon denial, she was dropped from the project. Some of the actors, producers, directors and artist suppliers are, however, at the receiving end of the new mission by the police and have stopped shooting of their ongoing projects in an attempt to cover up and have a cooling off period.