Award-winning Malayalam actress Swetha Menon has petitioned Kerala’s Congress Chief Minister Oommen Chandy about the alleged sexual harassment she suffered from Congress’s Kollam MP N Peethambara Kurup but Chandy said that she had not told him anything in the form of a complaint.
Swetha told newspersons in Thiruvananthapuram that she had told Chandy everything about the incident that occurred at Kollam in which she suffered nudging and gripping from Kurup and another person during the President’s Trophy Boat Race on November 1 at which she was the chief guest.
However, Chandy said that she had not told him anything in the form of a complaint nor had she referred to any person by name. “What she told me was about the troubles she had to face after the incidents at Kollam and certain statements (by Congress leaders). I told her I would look into that,” he said in Kochi on Sunday.
After the harassment at the venue of the boat race, Congress leaders including Kollam district party chief Prathapa Varma Thampan had further humiliated her saying she could not be considered a victim as she had allowed herself to be filmed during her delivery and acted in a contraceptive ad.
They also threatened her saying that Income Tax raids could be held against her. The incident occurred on November 1 but Swetha withdrew the complaint she had lodged with the police against Kurup on November 3 after he apologised to her privately and publicly. Strangely, Kurup later said that he had apologized to her not because he had misbehaved with her but because she had had a bad experience at a programme of which he was an organiser.
Women’s rights activists complained that Chandy’s “cold’ response to Swetha’s complaint was indicative of the irresponsible way in which the Congress and the State Government he was heading were viewing the act of sexual harassment against her by a Congress MP and the humiliating statements from party leaders.
According to Swetha, she had told Chandy “everything” about the incident at Kollam and the consequent developments. “I had met Chief Minister Chandy the other day and told him in detail about everything that had happened there (in Kollam),” she said. However, she did not specify how Chandy had reacted to her complaint.
The actress said that she had pardoned Kurup on the advice of her father after the MP offered his apologies. Expressing the helplessness of women in general in such matters, she said, “If the thorn falls on the leaf or the leaf falls on the thorn, it will be the leaf that gets hurt. “I don’t want to talk anymore about that,” she added.
“It is highly deplorable that even a person like Chandy was responding so coldly and formally to a complaint of a victim who suffered molestation from a powerful leader of his party. One should remember that Chandy had refused to condemn Kurup’s act when Swetha was appealing for justice,” said a leading women’s right activist from Thrissur.