Public spaces buses, campuses & cultural venues are emerging as sites of quiet feminist dissent, expanding protest beyond courts, streets and social media.
Post-verdict image management around Dileep show how celebrity power mobilises industry fan culture to overwrite survivor narratives.
The moment marks a shift in how judicial outcomes are publicly engaged with in Kerala, as citizens openly question the verdict
Two days after actor Dileep was acquitted and the trial court imposed the minimum punishment on those convicted in the actor assault case, Laxmi R. Sekhar was travelling on a state transport bus from Thiruvananthapuram to Adoor in Pathanamthitta district with her husband and son.
Shortly after the bus left the city, the driver began playing Parakkum Thalika, a Dileep-starrer and a superhit of an earlier era. Laxmi, like many women in Kerala in the aftermath of the verdict, was neither in the mood to enjoy nor willing to tolerate a Dileep film. She raised the issue with the conductor.
Almost all the passengers, barring one or two, supported her objection, compelling the driver to switch off the film.
The brief standoff on a public bus captured a larger churn playing out across the state. In the days since the verdict, expressions of solidarity with the survivor have spilled beyond courtrooms and social media into everyday spaces, accompanied by a growing call to boycott Dileep’s films. What was once dismissed as an online campaign is now asserting itself quietly, insistently, in Kerala’s shared public life.
Even as everyday acts of resistance, like passengers refusing to watch a Dileep film, began to surface across Kerala, an equally forceful counter-current gathered momentum online.
In the days following the verdict, social media platforms became sites of sustained and often vicious attacks on the survivor, signalling that the courtroom outcome had emboldened those determined to discredit her.
The survivor has since approached the police with a complaint against the second accused, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison, alleging that he uploaded malicious videos aimed at defaming and intimidating her.
The content, according to the complaint, sought not merely to question her credibility but to publicly shame her, a tactic familiar to survivors of sexual violence who dare to persist with their cases.
The polarisation sharpened two days after the verdict when actor Mohanlal posted a promotional poster for Bha Bha Bha, a film starring Dileep. In another moment, such a post might have passed unnoticed. Coming so soon after a judgment that had already triggered widespread anger and grief, it landed as a provocation. For Dileep’s supporters, the post was seized upon as validation—proof that the industry’s most powerful star stood by him. Screenshots circulated rapidly, accompanied by celebratory captions proclaiming Dileep’s “vindication”.
For others, the post raised troubling ethical questions. Was it merely a routine promotional gesture, or did it signal a deliberate closing of ranks by the industry at a moment when the survivor needed moral support? Critics argued that intent mattered less than impact—that the timing itself sent a chilling message about whose pain was considered expendable.
Among the most forceful responses came from award-winning sound artist Bhagyalakshmi, who publicly called out Mohanlal for what she described as a failure of empathy. “Didn’t he even stop for a moment to think about what he was doing?” she asked. “Mohanlal is someone we all love deeply, and that is precisely why this hurt so much.”
Bhagyalakshmi went further, warning against what she described as a coordinated attempt to rehabilitate Dileep’s public image through sustained public relations efforts.
“Those who are carrying out PR work at the behest of the people who conspired against the survivor should not imagine that they can break her,” she said.
In the hours following Mohanlal’s post, multiple social media pages and fan forums pivoted almost in unison to a new question: Would filmgoers now stand with Dileep? To many observers, the shift was telling. The conversation had moved swiftly away from the survivor’s long struggle for justice to the commercial prospects and recovery the powerful male reputation.
That shift, activists argue, is not incidental but structural, reflecting an industry and a society more comfortable debating loyalty and stardom than confronting sexual violence and the silencing mechanisms that surround it. As solidarity meetings are held, boycott calls intensify, and online abuse escalates, Kerala finds itself at a crossroads: between treating the verdict as closure, or recognising it as yet another moment that has laid bare the unequal burdens borne by survivors who refuse to be quiet.
Yet the verdict has not closed the chapter. Across Kerala, protests against the judgment and solidarity meetings with the survivor-avalkoppam (with her) are unfolding in public squares, university campuses and cultural spaces, signalling what many see as a pivotal moment in the state’s struggle for social justice and gender equality.
“The string of spontaneous and organised protests happening across Kerala in the aftermath of the court verdict is not only a landmark in the history of gender equality movements in South India,” says Dr Malavika Binny of Kannur University. “The public outrage against accused number eight, (Dileep) including calls to boycott his films and any products associated with him, is also a powerful expression of dissent,” she adds.
Dr Malavika Binny argues that these protests challenge conventional boundaries of democratic engagement. “In a democracy, the people’s right to question and dissent should not be limited to the executive and legislative branches alone; it must also extend to the judiciary. Traditionally, such questioning happens internally through appeals and amendments. But when people take to the streets demanding justice for a survivor and insisting on women’s safety and dignity, it marks the beginning of a new chapter—one with immense discursive potential for gender-sensitive lawmaking and the practice of law itself,” she says.
The survivor, too, struck a deeply unsettling note in her response to the verdict. In a statement issued soon after, she remarked that the judgment had forced her to confront a bitter truth — that “not every citizen in this country is treated equally before the law.”
The comment resonated widely, capturing a sense of disillusionment shared by many who had followed the case over the years.
Activists who have worked on multiple sexual violence cases caution, however, against mistaking visible outrage for structural change. While public conversations around gender justice have undeniably shifted, they argue, the foundations of patriarchy remain firmly intact.
“The superstar culture and fan clubs continue to disseminate deeply misogynistic ideas in society,” says activist Suja Susan George. “The way the survivor is being abused online after the verdict is a clear example of this.”
She points to a persistent dissonance between public posturing and private practice. “Many people who take progressive, pro–gender equality positions in public spaces rarely carry those values into their personal lives,” she says. “That entrenched patriarchy is now visible in the organised PR operations to rehabilitate a mediocre star. What is most disgusting is not just the operation itself, but the number of people willing to participate in and amplify it.”
As protests continue and the online backlash intensifies, the moment remains fraught and unresolved. What is unfolding in Kerala, activists say, is not merely a reaction to a single verdict but a reckoning with power, celebrity, and a justice system that too often asks survivors to carry the heaviest burden.
