When Sin Is Skin

Sex, Lies And Mallu Netas

1996: Suryanelli rape case. Some 42 men rape a teenage girl. Politicians among the accused. Rajya Sabha deputy chairman P.J. Kurien, who is alleged to have raped the girl, is discharged from investigation. Kerala government refuses police investigation against Kurien even after the recent SC order, saying Kurien has already been exonerated by the courts.

1997: Ice-cream parlour sex case. An ice-cream parlour in Kozhikode is used to lure under-age girls. Activist K. Ajitha of Anweshi files a complaint that girls are being sexually exploited by politicians. All witnesses turn hostile in the case. IUML leader P.K. Kunhalikutty is alleged to have been involved, is never chargesheeted. His name resurfaces every now and then.

2003: Kiliroor sex scandal. A teenage girl is enticed by a relative with promises of television serial roles. She is taken to hill station Idukki, gangraped. Dies in 2004 after giving birth to a child. There are allegations that Left politicians were involved. Typical obfuscation follows. No politician is brought to book.

2013: Kumar-Thankachi domestic violence case. Forest minister Ganesh Kumar files a case aga­inst estranged wife Dr Yamini Thankachi for cruelty, wants a divorce. Thankachi files a counter-case citing domestic violence. As the issue plays out on TV, Kumar resigns as forest minister. A week later, he apologi­ses publicly to Yamini, withdraws all cases.

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Seventeen years after a 16-year-old schoolgirl was allegedly raped by 42 men over 40 days in a resthouse in Kumily—Kerala’s infamous Suryanelli rape case—the high court began fresh hearings last month. The court had earlier acquitted all 35 named in the chargesheet, given life sentence to one, but public outcry, pleas from the victim and a directive from the Sup­reme Court has made it reopen the case. Many of the accused are politicians—the most prominent name to be dragged into the controversy being, of course, Rajya Sabha deputy chairman P.J. Kurien. “It was my daughter who had insisted that we tell our lawyers to move the courts to have Kurien investigated,” says the rape victim’s father.

Kurien had earlier moved the Kerala High Court and the apex court and was discharged from being investigated in the case. His name never even appeared in the list of accused. On the other hand, the victim and her family were ostracised by society. A former judge of the high court who heard her case went on to insensitively elaborate that she was a “child prostitute”, and so according to him it was not rape.

The Suryanelli case may be the one to have hit national headlines but sex sca­ndals and the Kerala politician have a long history.  Now, as never before, cases are surfacing after the Delhi gangrape incident—a new sense of rage against sexual violence has entered the weary consciousness of Kerala women too. Malayalam writer Sarah Joseph calls this the “times of confusion or the great muddle”. She says, “It’s a transitional period so the picture looks very unclear now. On one side, we see strong prote­sts against violence against women but on the other we see how the mechanisms of the police, the judiciary and politicians—whether from the left or the right—protect sex offenders.”

One of the most riveting moments on TV in recent times were the accusati­ons made by Dr Yamini Thankachi, est­ranged wife of now-deposed forest minister and actor K.B. Ganesh Kumar of the  Kerala Congress (B). What uns­­p­ooled was an act of unbridled audaciousness and gumption: on live TV Thankachi accused Ker­ala CM Oom­men Chandy of cheating her. She revealed that she had confided in Chandy, both over the phone and in person, that Ganesh had physically abused her and was involved in several extra-marital affairs. The CM had advised her to wait, promising to help without taking her written complaint. Meanwhile, Ganesh filed for divorce and accused Thankachi of cruelty and even furbished photographs of his bruised face as evidence. Thankachi was forced to register a counter case accusing Kumar of domestic violence. She went on to tell the media that the CM and other ‘mediators’ had been complicit in helping Kumar by not accepting her complaint. Kumar was forced to resign as forest minister. Though the government managed to hold on to power in spite of the opposition stalling the assembly, the damage had been done, the CM’s name had been dragged into a marital dispute case and he was accused of cheating a complainant.

Suja Susan George, activist and CPI(M) member, sees these sex scandals and the resultant cover-ups as part of the state’s power politics. “The patriarchal notions held by the state, the judiciary and organised religion are against women. The present government under Chandy is riding on a slender majority...they’ll do anything to cling on to power, even if that means protecting sex offenders.” She cites the case of Muslim League minister P.K. Kunhalikutty, in-charge of industries and IT, notoriously linked to the ice-cream parlour sex scandal. His party, the IUML, is a crucial component of the government. “In any political party, whether it is the left or the right, women are not given equal rights. This is the political culture of Kerala. Sadly, women politicians have internalised these patriarchal notions too,” adds George.

A display of this internalisation is blatant on TV debates. Many women politicians actually defend the sex offenders—indeed, it’s almost like they have been strategically positioned by their respective parties to plead on behalf of the accused. As Joseph points out: “We have seen a senior CPI(M) leader like P.K. Sreemathy give a clean chit to the alleged offenders in the 2003 Kiliroor sex case.” (In the case, the teen victim, Shari, was lured by a relative, Omanakutty, with the promise of a role in a television serial. Shari was taken to a resthouse in Idukki and raped by several men. It is alleged that some senior Left politicians were involved in the incident. In 2004, Shari died after giving birth to a child.)

Matters get curiouser as religious lea­ders too join the chorus of the def­ence. In the Suryanelli rape case, as the cries for P.J. Kurien’s resignation from the post of RS deputy chairman grew louder, the bishop of the Marthoma Church proclaimed that Kurien was the church’s golden boy. The Orthodox Jacobite church even held a special mass for him. Interestingly, in an exercise to sanitise his image, Kurien, a non-Catholic, headed the official delegation to the Vatican for the Pope’s ina­ugural. Says ex-MP and media critic Sebastian Paul, “It appears that the high chair-occupying Kurien had to stay away while the anti-rape case bill was being discussed in the Rajya Sabha. So he headed the official delegation to the Vatican. It seems like an absurd solution, forget sending the wrong sig­nals. Instead of punishing the offender, his acts have been condoned.” Paul says it’s come to a stage where politicians can do anything with impunity. In both the Ganesh Kumar and Kurien cases, there have been more attempts to tarnish the image of the complainant than indict the politician. In fact, in the Ganesh aff­air, it became like a reality show with the media celebrating it. Kumar is an actor and all this drama seemed like another episode in a soap opera.”

So what explains this rise in politica­lly linked sex scandals in the last two decades? “I think the reason is that sex is being offered as a way of enticement or a form of bribe to the politicians. And there is no mechanism to swiftly punish the politician...instead the entire system rises up to protect him,” says psychiatrist C.J. John. He says the problem lies in society’s inability to take ownership of the atrocities against women as the society’s problem. Inst­ead, it is categorised as the women’s problem. “The good thing in the Kumar-Thankachi episode is that Kerala got an education on the Domestic Violence Act. Maybe we will see more women reporting these crimes now,” he says. That seems to be the only positive to have come out of the recent sex scandals.