An orchestrated nightmare: A sexual assault that unmasked Malayalam cinema

Chapter 1: Nothing Personal

Manikandan got straight to the point.

“I’m accused number 3. I only watched what he did to her, I did not…” he said.

I met Mani on a hot February morning in Kerala’s Kochi. He parked his auto rickshaw, folded his mundu (dhoti), and watched me attentively. I suggested going to a restaurant so that we could sit and talk.

Mani is almost six feet tall. The sleeve of his khaki uniform wound a little too tightly around his biceps. He had three piercings on both ears. The studs that embellished them glistened. A silver chain hung heavy around his neck. In his WhatsApp display picture was an eagle perched on Mani’s shoulder, staring into the camera.

Mani has two young children. He lost his mother a year ago. Her photo was mounted just past the handlebar of his auto. As we walked to the restaurant, he spoke with an unexpected sense of familiarity. “Since I give people a lot of advice these days, I’ll give you one — even if you see someone dying on the road, don’t save them,” Mani said. “I wouldn’t.”

Once we sat down, he insisted that we both eat. “My wife gave me the confidence to speak to you.”

In 2021, after spending nearly five years in prison, Mani secured bail in a high-profile case of sexual assault.

Though Mani claimed innocence, a police investigation found that he, along with five others, had hatched a criminal conspiracy to kidnap a famous film actor and sexually assault her.

The crime — which took place on the night of February 17, 2017 — involved some of the biggest names in Malayalam cinema. On one end was the survivor of the assault, a popular south Indian actor Gayathri (name changed). On the other, a superstar who was accused of orchestrating the sinister plot that led to the assault: Dileep.

Seven years ago, Mani was a man in a hurry — he wanted a better life for himself, and he wanted it fast. To him, that meant getting closer to the power circles in Kochi, his hometown.

Just as Thiruvananthapuram is the political hub of Kerala, Kochi is where the glamour of the Malayalam film industry resides.

A friend once described Kochi to me as a city that is always trying to be one — a wannabe city. Everyone wants to be someone. Everyone is writing a script for a movie or knows someone who is. Everyone is friends with an actor or is one themselves. Everyone is always trying to get out of Kochi or knows someone who is.

Mani’s aspirations led him to the movies too. Around 2014, he found employment as a driver for producers and actors in the Malayalam film industry. Back then, he had a lot of friends — other drivers, artists, and people within the industry whom he travelled with and spent nights drinking with.

He no longer kept in touch with most of them. “I wake up, go to work, and get home,” Mani said, “And remind myself not to help anyone.”

I asked him why he felt this way.

Mani said it all began around 7 pm on the night of February 17, 2017, when he received a call that he said he “should never have answered.”

The call was from Sunil. Most people knew him as ‘Pulsar Suni’. He also worked as a driver in the film industry. Many of the people I interviewed said that his name got the prefix ‘Pulsar’ because he famously stole a specific kind of two-wheeler, Bajaj's Pulsar bikes. When I met Pulsar Suni's mother, she claimed that the moniker was just a testament to his love for the bike.

Mani said Pulsar Suni asked him to come along while he dropped off a Tempo Traveller. When Mani reached the Adlux Convention Centre in Angamaly, about 20 minutes away from his home, Pulsar Suni was waiting with another friend, who was also a driver.

Mani immediately noticed that Pulsar Suni was quite preoccupied. “He kept pacing and texting someone,” Mani said.

Roughly 90 kilometres away, Martin Antony’s phone kept buzzing. Martin was also a driver in the film industry. That night, at around 7 pm, he had picked up Gayathri, who is based in Thrissur. She was to travel from Thrissur to Kochi to record a promotional song for an upcoming movie.

By 8.30 pm, two more drivers from the industry joined Pulsar Suni. Mani was told that they were waiting for Martin to let them know when he was close.

Over the course of the next two hours, the lives of these seven individuals — Gayathri, Pulsar Suni, Mani, Martin, Saleem, Pradeep, and Vijesh — connected by cinema, divided by class, were about to be changed in ways they could not have imagined. For Gayathri, not by choice.

The ripple effects of that night echoed across Kerala.

The News Minute combed through nearly 900 pages of publicly-available court documents in the case. Over the past six months, we interviewed about 30 people — actors, directors, producers, and technicians from the Malayalam film industry; police officials; and those who were accused of the crime, including Dileep. We pieced together how that night, the events that led up to it, and its aftermath, continue to expose, divide, and haunt the Malayalam film industry.

At its core, this case featured a “megalomaniac” superstar, a female actor who refused to be silenced, and six hired criminals.

But the story did not end with them.

Even as many resolute women within the industry stood by their colleague, a battery of powerful men sought to protect each other at all costs. The state was compelled to rush to action, some of it was eventually buried.

During this time, the people of Kerala were left to grapple with a swirl of conflicting narratives: was this a case of a hero being maligned, or of a hero exacting vengeance because he felt slighted by a woman?

On that night of February 17, around 9 pm, as Gayathri’s car whizzed past the waiting men, Pulsar Suni’s phone beeped with Martin’s message. The signal had been given.

As Pulsar Suni took the wheel of the Tempo Traveller, the four other men, including Mani, clambered into it. Suni drove fast. Within minutes, he had intentionally rammed into Gayathri's vehicle.

Mani said he instinctively stepped out of the Tempo and apologised to the driver, Martin, whom he claimed not to have known back then.

Martin asked Mani to “talk to the madam” in the car.

Vijesh, one of the other drivers with Pulsar Suni, immediately jumped into the back seat and asked Mani to get in. “Inside, I was stunned to see Gayathri,” Mani said. “I'd only seen her on screen before.”

An award-winning actor who had filmed over 90 movies in Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, and Telugu, Gayathri was a well-known celebrity.

“She asked me, ‘Don't you know who I am?’ I almost laughed and said, ‘Of course, who wouldn't know you madam?’” Mani smiled as he recounted the exchange.

Once he got over his astonishment, Mani claimed, the absurdity of the moment struck him. Vijesh and he flanked Gayathri while Martin began driving. The car now had Gayathri, Martin, Mani, and Vijesh.

Gayathri told the police that when the men entered the car, she assumed they got in because they were angry about the accident and wanted to talk to Martin. Instead, to her shock, she said, the two men held her down and restrained her.

Pulsar Suni and the two other men followed Gayathri’s car in the Tempo Traveller.

According to Mani, he was in a state of confusion. ”I wondered what was going on. Why were we in this car? Why was everyone else so calm?”

Mani paused to take a bite of the dosa we had ordered, and suddenly said, “I need more sambar.”

At one point, Mani said, Gayathri pointed out that the vehicle was not going towards the production house. “No one responded to her.”

Moments later, both the car and the Tempo stopped. The men were thirsty. Water was had and seats were exchanged.

Martin and Vijesh got into the Tempo Traveller, Mani took the wheel of Gayathri’s car. Pulsar Suni entered the back seat and sat next to Gayathri. Now the car had just three people — Mani, Pulsar Suni, and Gayathri. There were a few moments of silence, said Mani.

Both vehicles sped on Kochi's bustling national highway.

Pulsar Suni was wearing a mask over his face, revealing just his eyes. As soon as he and Mani got into the car, Mani recalled Gayathri asking, “Suni, isn't that you?” Gayathri told the police that she had recognised him from one month before the incident, when he was assigned as her driver during a film shoot in Goa.

“Then I guess I don't need to cover my face,” Pulsar Suni said and removed his mask, Mani recalled.

Mani watched everything through the rearview mirror.

He said that Pulsar Suni calmly explained to Gayathri — “Look, we've followed you. This is a quotation.”

In Kerala, the word ‘quotation’ is colloquially used to refer to a contract crime. This was Suni's way of saying: this isn't personal.

Gayathri asked Suni who had ordered the quotation, but he refused to divulge. He told her that the men had been instructed to take a photo that would show her engagement ring against her bare body. Mani explained that this was to firmly establish Gayathri’s identity to the conspirator, who had demanded the photo as proof.

According to him, she negotiated that once she reached home, she would click the photo herself and send it. However, Suni said, “You don’t need to go to that much trouble. We'll take the photo ourselves.”

Mani told me that he often wondered why Gayathri did not try to get out of the car. Years later, when the trial began, he said, he was stunned by her memory of that night.

“She had managed to recall the number of the Tempo Traveller and other minute details. What if we had killed her and dumped her body somewhere? What use would it have been to remember the details?” Mani asked.

In essence, he seemed to suggest that Gayathri was at fault for not summoning the strength to overpower the multiple men who had cornered her. Instead, she tried to memorise what she could to hold the men accountable.

As per Gayathri’s account to the police, when she initially pleaded with Suni to let her go, he lost his patience. He told her that if she continued to make a fuss, they would take her to an apartment where more men were waiting to gang-rape her.

The fear froze her. She told the police, the only option she saw was to endure what was about to transpire and get out of the car as quickly and safely as possible.

According to Mani, it was at this point that he began questioning Suni. A screaming match ensued. “Suni threatened me. He reminded me that I am no one. I thought of my family and kept quiet.”

Pulsar Suni then turned to Gayathri, “Now, you've to do as I say.”

He then proceeded to sexually assault her and record these acts in eight video clips.

(TNM will not go into details of the sexual assault, which would be classified as rape under the Indian law.)

In Mani's telling, he was a mere bystander in the assault. But the police found that he had been aware of exactly what the plan for the night was, and had even used force while restraining Gayathri in the car.

After the crime, Pulsar Suni got out of the car. Mani said he quickly turned around to face Gayathri. He recalled telling her, “Listen chechi (sister), please don't take any of this to heart. I have no connection to it.”

Mani claimed that he took her phone, added his number to it, and told her to call him if she ever needed any help in the future. (While Gayathri did recall Mani said 'sorry' to her, she told TNM that he did not give her his number).

With that, Mani too left the car.

Martin got back into the driver’s seat and sped away with Gayathri. He dropped her at her friend’s house.

match ensued. “Suni threatened me. He reminded me that I am no one. I thought of my family and kept quiet.”

Pulsar Suni then turned to Gayathri, “Now, you've to do as I say.”

He then proceeded to sexually assault her and record these acts in eight video clips.

(TNM will not go into details of the sexual assault, which would be classified as rape under the Indian law.)

In Mani's telling, he was a mere bystander in the assault. But the police found that he had been aware of exactly what the plan for the night was, and had even used force while restraining Gayathri in the car.

After the crime, Pulsar Suni got out of the car. Mani said he quickly turned around to face Gayathri. He recalled telling her, “Listen chechi (sister), please don't take any of this to heart. I have no connection to it.”

Mani claimed that he took her phone, added his number to it, and told her to call him if she ever needed any help in the future. (While Gayathri did recall Mani said 'sorry' to her, she told TNM that he did not give her his number).

With that, Mani too left the car.

Martin got back into the driver’s seat and sped away with Gayathri. He dropped her at her friend’s house.

Chapter 2: A Manhunt
The next morning, Kerala woke up to the news — late into the night, an actor had been kidnapped in her own car and assaulted in the backseat, while being driven around the city that had made her a star.

When a sexual assault does not happen in a secluded place or at an odd hour, but instead in the middle of bustling traffic and glaring street lights, the city takes it personally. Moreover, Gayathri was an actor. As with all celebrities, she belonged to the people, and her assault felt personal to them.

Two days after the incident, the Malayalam film industry filed into Kochi’s Durbar Hall Ground — a space usually reserved for celebrations, promotions, and award functions.

Senior actors such as Mammootty, Innocent, Manju Warrier, and Lal spoke to the public. They expressed anguish, offered solidarity, and demanded justice.

By then, the names and faces of all six accused had been flashed across television channels in the state. News that a gangster like Pulsar Suni had been working as a driver for people in the industry fuelled reports that suggested the deep nexus between the film world and gangsters.

That night, among the industry folk, in the very front row, sat superstar Dileep. When his turn came, Dileep walked up and placed his arms confidently on the wooden edges of the podium. He began by praising the police. “Everyone is keen to find out who is behind this attack,” he said. He urged the media not to “twist the facts.”

His speech ended with, “I believe all of you will be with us.”

Reacting to the uproar, the Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan, promised a thorough probe.

The public was breathing down the neck of the Kerala police.

The official machinery was pushed into quick action. Security was tightened — the state was on high alert, borders were closed, and the hunt for the men was in full force.

Meanwhile, Mani, Pulsar Suni, and Vijesh had made it to Tamil Nadu. They lay low at the house of Pulsar Suni's friend. Mani said that after resting for a bit, the men sat down to watch the assault videos for the first time.

“They enjoyed it. I didn’t really watch it,” he said.

Martin, Saleem, and Pradeep were the first to be arrested. Mani, Pulsar Suni, and Vijesh surrendered soon after.

Mani met the Kerala police at a bus stop in Palakkad, a district bordering Tamil Nadu. “They almost arrested someone else. I had to call out to them and say, ‘I’m Manikandan! I’m the one you want. Not him’,” he said, laughing.

On February 23, 2017, Pulsar Suni and Vijesh whizzed into the compound of the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (ACJM) court in Kochi. They were dressed like lawyers, clad in white shirts and black jackets.

True to Suni's name, they were on a Pulsar bike.

They snuck into the courtroom, took off their helmets, and threw aside their jackets — exposing their identity.

The plan had been to avoid police custody, surrender before the court, and go straight to judicial custody — a common tactic used by criminals to evade police interrogation.

However, they miscalculated the timing of their entry. Just minutes before, the magistrate had adjourned the court for lunch.

The police immediately barged into the room and dramatically dragged out a kicking and screaming Vijesh and Suni. It continues to remain a mystery how the two had managed to make their way across the state borders despite the high alert.

Within a week, all six perpetrators were under arrest. But any relief was short-lived.

As the details of the night began to trickle in, it became evident that this wasn't an impulsive crime.

Somebody, somewhere had scripted the night that these six men executed.

The narrative took a turn. It was no longer a whodunnit case, but a case of ‘who wanted it done’.

The conversation and investigation were now focused on identifying who harboured resentment against Gayathri.

The first name to surface was that of Dileep’s.

Gayathri and Dileep had once been friends, but everyone within the industry knew that they had a falling out.

The relationship had soured to a point that she alleged to have lost multiple work opportunities because of him. In 2015, for instance, Gayathri had spoken about how she faced an “unwritten ban” due to the vengeful attitude of a popular actor. The same year, she complained to a senior member within AMMA, the Association of Malayalam Movie Artists, that Dileep’s interference had harmed her career.

Given their tumultuous history, the media began to make references to “an actor from Aluva” as a possible mastermind of the crime. Dileep is one of the biggest actors from this town near Kochi.

In February 2017, the month in which the crime was committed, Dileep, popularly known as janapriya nayakan (people’s hero), was about to open a new branch of his successful restaurant chain in Dubai.

Through a three-decade-long career, Dileep had emerged as one of the few actors in the Malayalam film industry who had been elevated to the realm of stardom occupied by seasoned veterans, such as Mohanlal and Mammootty.

Dileep was not the typical macho hero. His distinct brand of humour kept Malayalis in splits for much of his career. People watched Dileep’s movies as an escape from their lives.

Off screen, Dileep was the reigning octopus of the industry. He was not just a superstar but also an emerging business mogul who had slithered his hands into every facet of Malayalam cinema — direction, production, distribution, and theatre ownership. There were also speculative reports on his real estate dealings.

“Dileep was not just popular, but also powerful. He has a huge network, he’s a shrewd businessman, an artist, a star, and actually, a very smart man,” said Malayalam filmmaker Aashiq Abu.

On April 10, 2017, Manorama Online published a video interview with Dileep, in which he addressed his alleged involvement in the sexual assault for the first time. Despite his attempt to remain composed, he appeared to be seething. He was visibly on edge.

He began by claiming credit not just for Gayathri’s success, but for her very existence in the film industry. He said that even though no director or producer had wanted to cast her, he gave her a role when “she was not even a heroine” and then cast her in six to seven of his movies.

“I am the one who said she should be a heroine,” he declared.

Dileep, who had been a picture of support at the Durbar Hall Ground just a few weeks ago, had clearly undergone a sea change in his attitude.

Regarding the sexual assault, he contended when “a girl gets raped” she may resort to “suicide” or face “mental issues.” He then questioned the credibility of Gayathri’s experience when he said, “I appreciate that she (Gayathri) got back to work within two days of such an incident.”

Finally, he cast himself as the victim.

He equated media speculations of his involvement in the crime with being raped. He said, “It’s just that nobody touched my body but I’ve been entirely tortured, right? I’ve even thought of suicide.”

In another interview with Nikesh Kumar, the then head of the Malayalam news channel Reporter TV, Dileep even tried to shift the blame on Gayathri by claiming that she had been friends with Pulsar Suni.

“We should be careful about our friends. I have never made friends with such people,” Dileep said.

Up until then, Dileep was used to walking into a room and dictating the narrative. But he had very little control over the script of his own case.

Two months after the crime, as rumours about Dileep's involvement intensified, he rushed to the Kerala Director General of Police to file a complaint. In it, he claimed unknown people were trying to implicate him in the crime and extort money from him.

The first plot twist in the Dileep case began with a man called Jinson Eliyas.

Jinson met me on the side of a road in Thrissur, where he worked as a daily wage labourer. He was one of those men who did not look small even when he was perched on top of a massive excavating machine. The 6 foot 2 inch man climbed down from the vehicle, wiped his hands on his mundu and greeted me.

Jinson is currently out on bail after he was arrested for a petty crime. As we got into my car to speak, he quickly appreciated that I was not wearing a necklace. He then added that if I ever wanted to, “wear a small one, okay?”

Jinson described himself as a former chain-snatcher. He was jailed in 2016.

After Pulsar Suni was arrested in 2017, Jinson and he shared a prison cell for nearly five months.

Jinson believes he is a simple man but that’s exactly what complicates him. “Look, I like to be a hero wherever I go. Even in jail, nothing illegal could happen without my knowledge. Just like a leader,” he said, and added, “It’s simple, I’m into that kind of attention.”

As soon as Jinson was released on bail in July 2017, he went to the police.

He told them that Pulsar Suni had snuck a phone into prison and called two people closely associated with Dileep — a friend and the actor’s driver.

Jinson said that when Pulsar Suni initially entered prison, he seemed far too confident for a powerless man. “It surprised all of us.”

During one of their long, late-night conversations, he asked Pulsar Suni about the sexual assault. “Actually when I was making her do it, I felt bad looking at her face. But what to do machane (buddy), I had no other choice” — those were Suni’s exact words, said Jinson.

But Suni had a choice, and he had chosen money. His statements to the police indicate that the assault was part of a deliberate deal. He was to commit the crime and be paid in return. Mani also told me that Suni had handed him a gold chain as ‘payment’ for his role in the crime.

Jinson said the phone calls to Dileep’s friend and the driver made Pulsar Suni’s confidence crumble. “Dileep’s driver apparently told him to stop calling and that he was on his own. That's when he realised he had been cheated,” alleged Jinson.

Then, Pulsar Suni wrote a letter addressed to Dileep.

In the letter, he wrote that he was scared. He asked Dileep why he had not helped him yet. He pleaded with Dileep to send word and money. He signed off with an erratic threat, “I have not betrayed you…I have always kept you safe, until this moment when you read this letter.”

With that, Dileep found himself directly embroiled in the case for the first time.

The letter, however, had since been strongly contested as a piece of evidence.

When Dileep’s associates received the calls and the letter, he had informed the police soon after. Later in various petitions to the court, Dileep has asked — if he had anything to hide, why would he himself tell the police about Pulsar Suni’s attempts to get in touch with him? He said the calls and the letter were part of a larger scheme to falsely implicate him.

On July 10, 2017, after hours of questioning, Dileep was arrested. The police said that they had ”irrefutable proof” of his involvement in the conspiracy to abduct and sexually assault Gayathri.

A day after his arrest, AMMA removed him from the organisation.

In under five months after the sexual assault, Dileep found himself exactly where he likes to be — at the centre of the story.

Chapter 3: Dileep
Known for his slapstick humour, Dileep’s films are some of the most re-watched in Kerala.

Born into a business family in 1967, Dileep, whose official name is Gopalakrishnan Padmanabhan Pillai, is the eldest among three siblings.

Fresh out of college, Dileep joined Kalabhavan, a prestigious centre for performing arts in Kochi. He also became part of a long-running stage show called ‘Mimics’ Parade’, which featured satirical skits and mimicry performances. Since satire and humour are deeply stitched into Kerala’s social fabric, the show was an instant hit.

“Dileep was so thin that whenever he went on stage, we made him wear two pairs of pants and two shirts,” KS Prasad, the founder of the group, told me.

Slowly, Dileep started inching towards cinema.

Directors said he would endlessly hang around film sets, make people laugh, and ask for acting roles. After working as an assistant director, he landed a cameo in 1992, which paved the way for meatier gigs.

In 1998, 31-year-old Dileep married a 20-year-old Manju Warrier, who was already a star by then.

Although both of them had started their journeys around the same time, Manju found instant success, but Dileep was still considered a mediocre actor.

After the wedding, Manju disappeared from the public eye. Dileep told a publication that he did not want his wife “hugging and acting” with others.

Meanwhile, his own career finally took off. His ability to offer himself up for mockery garnered public affection. Back then, his films were considered “family-friendly.” In retrospect, it is evident they were anything but that.

During the early 2000s, Dileep played a man with feminine mannerisms in his film Chanthupottu, directed by Lal Jose. The film was heavily criticised by LGBTQIA+ activists for advancing deep-rooted misconceptions about gender and sexuality. The word ‘chanthupottu’ (meaning red bindi) is still used as a derogatory term among Malayalis to insult men who display feminine traits.

Much like his off screen expectations, even in his movies, women were reduced to being portrayed as housewives with no agency. His dialogues were littered with rape jokes and sexual innuendos.

In his superhit film Meesha Madhavan (2002), Dileep played the role of a thief who sneaks into the female lead's room and claims that the way she is sleeping makes him want to rape her. In what is intended to be a comedic barb, he says, “If I rape you right now, you will be suffering for 10 months with a bump.”

None of this stopped families from flocking to theatres to watch his films.

By the late 2000s, the success of his films was spanning languages and states. In 2006, a movie he starred in, called Punjabi House, was remade into the Shahid Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor Khan-starrer Chup Chup Ke. His 2010 blockbuster Bodyguard was remade into Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, and Kannada.

According to multiple sources in the industry, as Dileep’s stardom rose, so did instances of his allegedly corrupt and vindictive behaviour.

Industry insiders said that they first witnessed Dileep’s desire for power when director Thulasidas went up against him in 2008.

Thulasidas had filed a complaint against Dileep with the Malayalam Cine Technicians Association (MACTA) — an umbrella organisation that comprised 19 cinema federations. The director alleged that Dileep was refusing to shoot for his film and had walked away with the producer and an advance that he took from Thulasidas.

Instead of settling the issue amicably, Dileep staged an overnight coup. He sidelined MACTA and set up the Film Employees Federation of Kerala (FEFKA) with some of the most powerful directors in the industry.

Thulasidas and others who took a stand against Dileep faced an unofficial ban. “I have suffered a lot because of Dileep,” Thulasidas had said back then.

The incident sent out a strong message — Dileep was not someone to be messed with.

In the meantime, the actor was also establishing himself as the patriarch of the Malayalam film industry.

In 2008, AMMA, which has over 500 members, was low on funds.

Dileep, the then treasurer, decided to spearhead, produce, and distribute a blockbuster film called Twenty:20. The thriller — in which stars such as Mohanlal, Mammootty, Suresh Gopi, Jayaram, Indrajith, Kavya Madhavan, Gayathri*, and Dileep himself acted for free — collected over Rs 32 crore, a massive collection for a film in Kerala back then. Dileep channelled the movie’s profits to AMMA. Through the organisation, he distributed the funds to actors who were struggling financially and introduced a pension for AMMA’s members.

Such interventions generated enormous goodwill for Dileep. They cemented his networks of patronage and influence.

He was building an avatar as a messiah.

In January 2017, Dileep intervened in an altercation between film exhibitors and producers’ associations. Again, he sidelined both bodies and simply started a new exhibitors’ association called the Film Exhibitors United Organisation of Kerala (FEUOK). With that, he had over 350 A-class theatres under his wing.

It was widely perceived that such forays made him more powerful than heavyweights like Mammootty or Mohanlal.

Dileep had also set up a production house called Grand Productions, two restaurant chains Dhe Puttu and Mango Tree, and a theatre complex named D Cinemaas.

In under three decades, Dileep had nudged, clawed, and elbowed his way to the top.

When Dileep was arrested, industry insiders had much to say on him. Some spoke about their harsh experiences with him, while others reminded viewers of Dileep's philanthropic ways.

In 2015, at the peak of his career, Dileep filed for divorce from Manju Warrier citing “cruelty.” Their daughter Meenakshi chose to stay with Dileep and continues to do so.

Saritha (name changed), a close friend of Manju, described Dileep to me as a “pure male chauvinist” who did not let his partner have a life. According to her, Dileep “completely broke Manju’s sense of self” and controlled her finances.

Around 2015, Saritha said, Dileep found out that Manju was confiding in her. Saritha recalled that an enraged Dileep then called her and said, “Well, if you're a woman, there will be restrictions, right? What is so surprising about this?”

During their separation, a section of the Malayalam media was on Dileep’s side. He was portrayed as the lonely husband left to be a single parent, while Manju became the stereotypical career-driven, heartless mother. Manju had made her comeback with the 2014 film How Old Are You, in which she played a working woman constantly belittled by her husband and daughter.

Dileep’s separation from Manju also gave way to increased gossip about his affair with Kavya Madhavan, then one of Malayalam industry’s leading actors. Kavya and Dileep were already a beloved on-screen couple.

Manju had maintained years of silence before and after the divorce. Later, when she became a crucial witness in Gayathri’s sexual assault case, she told the police that Dileep’s extramarital affair with Kavya had ended their marriage.

In 2016, a year after his divorce, Dileep married Kavya.

On their wedding day, flanked by Kavya and his daughter Meenakshi, Dileep held a live press conference from the venue. He claimed that he wanted to save Kavya from the public vitriol she had faced because she had been accused of breaking up his first marriage. “We did only one crime and that was acting together in 21 films. She was made a scapegoat because of me. So, I decided I would marry her,” he said.

Soon after, Kavya completely fell off the professional radar.

Meanwhile, rumours about Dileep’s deep religious leanings became common within the industry.

While being superstitious is not uncommon in the movie world, many people who were close to Dileep emphasised that the actor was “quite extreme.”

Saritha said that Dileep often demanded the astrological charts of those involved in the films he worked in, to determine if they were favourable. If someone's astrological stars did not align, “the person would be removed,” she said.

A relative of Manju’s recalled an incident during which a female actor had been signed onto a Dileep film, but was removed at the very last second because “a crow had flown by during one of their crucial meetings.” According to the relative, Dileep considered this a bad omen. A senior cinematographer also said that he was removed from Dileep’s team because of an ‘issue’ with his horoscope.

Most of Dileep’s films are released on July 4, which he considers his lucky day. Some people within the industry claimed that Dileep performed strange rituals. “People would say that he would bury eggs in the homes of people. One such egg was discovered from an actor’s house. Such instances were even reported in the media,” a female actor and Dileep’s former colleague said.

According to industry insiders, Dileep considered it lucky for his films to include a scene in which he slapped the actor Riyaz Khan, who often appeared in antagonistic roles. He is seen doing this in at least five movies.

Director Balachandrakumar, who knew Dileep for seven years, said that the actor tried to pressure him to change his name after consulting a numerologist.

Inside Dileep’s house, Balachandrakumar recalled being given multiple directions: You cannot enter the house on your left foot. You cannot meet the actor for work if you're wearing black-coloured clothes. You cannot sit on certain chairs. You cannot sit at a spot that makes you taller than Dileep. You cannot sit with your leg up.

Everything was a coordinated dance that revolved around the “megalomaniac actor,” the director said.

Chapter 4: Intentions and Reputations

Even after Dileep went to jail for conspiracy, it remained unclear what exactly provoked this crime.

According to the police, the motive for the crime dated back to incidents that occurred in 2010, when Dileep, Kavya, Gayathri, and singer Rimi Tomy travelled to the United States for a performance tour.

Back then, Gayathri was good friends with Dileep.

Rimi told the police that at the time, it was common knowledge that Dileep and Kavya were in a relationship.

In the US, Rimi and Gayathri shared a room. Kavya was travelling with her parents.

On the last night of their tour, Dileep and Kavya visited Rimi and Gayathri's room, seeking some privacy. The couple allegedly went into the bathroom for a few moments and then left.

In 2012, Manju Warrier, Dileep's then wife, happened to see a text exchange between Kavya and her husband.

She called her friends Geetu Mohandas and Samyuktha Varma, both actors. Together they all went to Gayathri’s house — as she was Dileep’s friend — to gain more clarity. At that point, after much cajoling, Gayathri revealed what had happened in the US.

Manju then confronted Dileep about his affair. According to her, he dismissed the accusations and called Gayathri “ignorant.”

However, this resulted in the end of Gayathri and Dileep’s friendship. He allegedly bore a grudge against her.

The police said multiple witnesses from the film industry told them about one particularly aggressive argument between Dileep and Gayathri in 2013. She had later complained to AMMA about being denied acting opportunities because of Dileep.

In his petitions to the court, Dileep maintained that his so-called enmity with Gayathri was a “false theory,” which was “carefully engineered” with the sole motive of destroying his reputation.

In the last seven years, Dileep has questioned the nature of the crime itself. He called the assault videos shot by Pulsar Suni as “fabricated” and alluded that the act was of a different nature.

The police said that the first discussion to harm Gayathri happened in 2013 in Kochi, when Pulsar Suni visited Dileep at a hotel that the actor was staying at.

According to the police, the plan was put on the backburner. Later, when Gayathri was to get engaged, the scheme was allegedly reignited. “The prosecution’s case is that the crime was timed to ruin her engagement,” said a lawyer associated with the case.

The night of February 17, 2017, wasn’t Pulsar Suni’s first attempt at attacking Gayathri. He had tried to kidnap and assault her a month before in Goa. He had been assigned to pick Gayathri up from the Goa airport and drop her at a shoot location two hours away. The idea was to execute the plan during this journey.

However, he failed.

According to Gayathri's lawyers, she remained safe because another member of the film crew had also gotten into the car.

On the other hand, Dileep told the media that he had “never in his life seen, met, or talked with any of the accused persons.” But this argument was contested when a photo of Dileep and Pulsar Suni in the same frame was found.

Just months before the crime, Dileep had taken a selfie with a fan. In the background of this photo, Pulsar Suni is seen standing with his arms crossed. This established that Dileep and Pulsar Suni had been at the same location at the same time.

Dileep once again insisted that this too was part of a “smear campaign” to extort money from him. In his petitions, he referred to Pulsar Suni as a criminal whose statements could not be trusted.

As with all rape cases, this trial too was to be conducted in-camera. This meant that only those related to the case were permitted inside the courtroom.

In January 2020, when the trial began, Dileep sought gag orders against the media to stop any reporting of the case. Later that year, he filed a petition against 10 media houses, accusing them of violating the injunction. In 2022, Dileep went to court and five cases were registered against journalist Nikesh Kumar.

The gag orders resulted in a lot of protest, especially from women journalists across the country. They pointed out that such gag orders benefitted an already privileged accused and not the survivor, who was professionally and personally isolated.

Dileep argued that the reportage was targeted to injure his reputation and violate his right to a fair trial.

In the meantime, he actively worked on reviving his image. He was constantly present in the media to promote his films and speak of his mental health.

In January 2022, women’s magazine Vanitha featured an interview with him and his family as its cover story. He spoke to them about his life since the case began. The story painted a sympathetic picture of Dileep, describing his last five years as a “ship shaken by a storm.”

Chapter 5: Shifting Tide
When Mani had dreamt of a better life for himself — a life spent in close proximity to celebrities — a prison complex shared with Dileep was not what he had imagined.

The day Dileep entered jail, it was a “celebration,” said Mani. “Most of the inmates were his fans.”

Dileep was lodged in cell number two of the Aluva Sub Jail, while Mani was in cell number twelve, crammed with fifteen other people.

Despite being just metres apart, Dileep was entirely out of reach for Mani.

Two police officials stood guard outside the actor’s cell. “The jail officials told us that we should not even look towards his side.”

Dileep, Mani said, spent most of his time entertaining guests in the jail superintendent’s office, where there was an air conditioner and “other facilities.”

The visitor's diary of the jail narrated a story of power.

Usually a prisoner is allowed four to five visitors a month. During the 85 days that Dileep spent in jail, he had 78 visitors — family members, colleagues, and politicians.

On October 3, 2017, the court said that the investigation was close to an end. Crucial witnesses had been examined, and the actor’s continued custody was no longer justified.

Dileep was granted bail.

It was a happy day inside the jail complex. Mani recalled that prison officials took selfies with the actor. Dileep went to each cell and shook hands with all the prisoners.

At around 5.20 pm, when Dileep, dressed in a white shirt and sporting a full beard, emerged out of the prison, the crowd went hysterical. Boxes of sweets were passed around, crackers went off, and a massive cutout of Dileep floated through the crowd. One fan told the media, “It’s as if a child has been born in our family.”

Even the policemen trying to control the crowd couldn’t stop grinning.

Three days before Dileep stepped out, his film Ramaleela was released. In it, he played a character who was framed for murdering a political rival. In one scene of the film, Dileep’s dialogue mirrored the argument he frequently made while referring to his case — “It looks like somebody deliberately wants me to be named as an accused.”

The people’s hero was back.

Ramaleela turned out to be one of the highest-grossing Malayalam films of the year, and arguably, of his entire career.

By the end of 2017, Dileep appointed senior advocate B Raman Pillai as his lawyer, known for his calm and shrewd methods of cross examination. Previously, Raman Pillai had represented Bishop Franco Mulakkal, who was accused of raping a nun in 13 different instances. Mulakkal was acquitted by a Kerala trial court in 2022.

Close to a year after Dileep’s release from jail, he was reinstated by AMMA, the artistes’ association. He resumed work, making public appearances and attending events.

Meanwhile, Gayathri, along with three actors — Rima Kallingal, Geetu Mohandas, and Ramya Nambeesan — resigned from AMMA.

Gayathri also stepped away from the Malayalam film industry. In an interview with TNM in 2022, she said, “I was not in the right frame of mind and could not continue working here as if nothing had gone wrong.”

Chapter 6: Tried and Tested
In January 2020, almost three years after the crime, the trial began.

It took Gayathri 15 days to relive and recollect an ordeal that lasted exactly 19 minutes and 35 seconds.

Expecting she would find more empathy and privacy, Gayathri requested for a female judge to take over her case. Judge Honey M Varghese was appointed to preside.

It was a decision Gayathri came to deeply regret.

Within ten months of the trial, Gayathri requested that the judge be changed. In an affidavit that she filed with Kerala High Court, she said that she was “suffering a second trauma” as the judge was “biased and hostile.”

Ramesh (name changed), who was part of her legal counsel, said that when the trial began, Dileep had around twenty lawyers in his defence counsel, while the other nine accused had two lawyers each. This meant that nearly 38 lawyers were present in the court just from the defence's side.

Gayathri’s team, which is the prosecution, had only two lawyers. Other than her, the judge, and a woman constable, everyone else in that courtroom was a man, making it intimidating for her to depose.

During the cross examination, Gayathri said, she broke down numerous times due to the relentless attacks on her, which “transgressed all boundaries of decency.” In the same affidavit, she said, she was once forced to leave the courtroom in tears after “suffering humiliation and ridicule by a battery of Dileep’s defence lawyers.”

But the judge, according to Gayathri's affidavit, remained a “mute spectator.” Instead of protecting her from being “subject to ridicule, taunts, sarcasm, jeers and laughter,” the petition noted, the judge “appeared to have rather joined ‘the fun’.”

Gayathri also alleged that the judge did not record some of her statements.

The special public prosecutor, A Suresan, also filed an affidavit with the Kerala High Court regarding some of the derogatory remarks being made by Judge Honey Varghese. He noted an instance in which the judge had reprimanded the prosecution team in a derogatory way.

The High Court, however, rejected the petition. Disappointed, Suresan resigned towards the end of November 2020.

Advocate VV Anil Kumar was appointed as the next special public prosecutor. Within a year, in December 2021, he too walked out of the courtroom in a huff. In his resignation letter, he wrote that the atmosphere during the hearing was “uncongenial.”

Currently, advocate Aja Kumar is the special public prosecutor in the case.

Between 2020 and 2024, Gayathri and the Kerala state filed at least four pleas, both with the Kerala High Court and the Supreme Court of India, requesting a change of judge. The petitions were rejected each time. The courts emphasised that there was no reason to suspect the judge would not carry out her duties well.

Meanwhile, witness after witness was declared hostile. Twenty witnesses who had testified to the police seemed to suffer from sudden lapses in memory in the courtroom.

For instance, three actors — Siddique, Bhama, and Edavela Babu — were witnesses who had apparently seen an angry Dileep arguing with Gayathri for interfering in his marital life.

Later, when they were testifying in court, all three said that they “can’t remember” the incident.

Edavela Babu, who was the then AMMA secretary, had told the police about Gayathri’s complaint to the organisation that she was losing work opportunities due to Dileep. However, in court, Edavela Babu said there was no record of the same.

Actor Edavela Babu, the then secretary of AMMA, was among the witnesses who were declared hostile in the case against Dileep.
Actor Edavela Babu, the then secretary of AMMA, was among the witnesses who were declared hostile in the case against Dileep.
The witnesses who were declared hostile were not just participants in a legal process. They were Gayathri’s friends, her colleagues, people she had grown up around. Suddenly, her world was turning its back on her.

Ashwin (name changed), Gayathri’s relative, said that Bhama’s flip really affected her. “She was a friend, or so we thought.”

Jinson, Pulsar Suni’s fellow prison inmate, told me that he faced pressure to change his statement. “I got a call from someone who said Dileep’s lawyer wanted to offer me Rs 25 lakh to change my statement,” he said. He filed a police complaint with an audio recording from his phone as evidence.

When I asked Jinson why he rejected the money, he said, “I made enough money through illegal ways and it brought too many headaches to my life. Now I just want to make money by working.”

In the meantime, even as Dileep repeatedly claimed not to be guilty, three glaring questions stood out: Why was he gathering gag orders? Why were witnesses turning hostile? Why did he insist to courts on getting the sexual assault visual?

According to a source within the investigating team, the police initially suspected Dileep’s involvement because of his own panicked response to the media speculations about his role in the case.

But by the end of 2020, the case against Dileep had grown weak.

Apart from circumstantial evidence — such as Pulsar Suni’s confession, the photograph that placed Dileep and Pulsar Suni together at a tennis club in Thrissur, and a witness at the club — nothing could strongly establish Dileep’s involvement in the events of that night.

Dileep had not been present at the crime scene. There was no forensic evidence to incriminate him. The motive for the crime, which the police were establishing through testimonies, was now diluted as witnesses turned cold.

Then, Balachandrakumar decided to speak.

Chapter 7: The Plot Thickens
In Kerala’s capital city, Thiruvananthapuram, director Balachandrakumar stood under the shade of the verandah of his house. As I stepped into his home, his wife viewed me with suspicion. “Ignore her, she’s sceptical of anyone who comes here to talk about Dileep,” he said.

In one corner of the living room, a thick stack of papers was piled against the wall. “That’s the movie I was supposed to make with him. Now I keep it near the door, where we keep our dirty slippers,” he said.

Balachandrakumar walked with a slight limp. When I met him, he was recovering from a kidney-related medical condition for which he underwent dialysis thrice a week.

Balachandrakumar was initially part of Dileep’s coterie.

But by 2021, he said, he had had enough.

According to Balachandrakumar, he first met Dileep in 2014, when they decided to work together. He was going to write and direct a movie that Dileep would act in and produce. Actor Tamannaah Bhatia was to be the female lead.

The director, just one film old then, was thrilled at the prospect that his life was about to change. After he signed on the film, he felt like he had been inducted into the big budget, big league world.

He imagined expensive shoot locations, aimed to cast A-list stars, and dreamt of hiring a full-fledged crew. He even moved into one of Dileep’s homes. “Dileep told me to live there and worry about nothing but work,” he said.

Balachandrakumar said that in November 2017, just after Dileep’s release from jail, he visited the actor’s residence, hoping that they could start shooting for their film.

When he arrived at Dileep’s house, the actor was not alone. Balachandrakumar said that Dileep was there with his brother, brother-in-law, and two friends. He recalled that they all crowded into a guest room with large glass windows.

While everyone lounged in the guest room, Balachandrakumar said, he also took a seat there and scrolled through different news articles on his tablet. The others, he said, gathered around Dileep, who was seated on a couch, and started “watching a video.”

Balachandrakumar alleged it was the video clip of Gayathri’s assault.

“How did they have the video, which only existed on one memory card, which is in court?” — that was his first thought, he said.

According to him, he then began to record the conversation between the men. “Till date, I don’t know what came over me or why I did it. Imagine if Dileep had caught me doing it,” Balachandrakumar said.

Dileep, he said, asked for different clips to be replayed. “They seemed unhappy about the quality of the audio,” Balachandrakumar alleged.

Sharat, one of Dileep’s childhood friends, was allegedly entrusted with the task of enhancing the audio quality. But even after he made attempts to improve the quality, Balachandrakumar alleged, Dileep complained that the audio still wasn’t good enough for him and that he couldn’t hear Gayathri properly.

“He was also not very happy about the camera angles in the video,” Balachandrakumar told me.

He said that after that evening, he found it hard to believe that Dileep was not involved in the crime.

To the director, the objective of this choreography was to rope him in as an accomplice and co-opt him into silence.

Balachandrakumar said that months before the sexual assault, he had seen Pulsar Suni at Dileep’s house. When the crime was reported on TV channels, he had mentioned this memory to Dileep.

“Dileep must have got worried that I would tell someone,” he said and alleged, “So by watching the assault video in front of me, he had made me a part of the case, hoping that I would shut up.”

Dileep has continuously denied such a meeting and alleged that Balachandrakumar was propped up by a failing investigating team.

Balachandrakumar told me that after that night, he simply saved all the recordings and continued working with Dileep for the next two years. Since he did not report the tapes during this time, the director's credibility as a witness has been questioned by Dileep’s defence.

Balachandrakumar’s explanation for the delay was that back then, he was a new director, on the cusp of something big. “Dileep told me that Salman Khan’s team had contacted him to see if our movie could be remade. Can you imagine what a big deal this was for me?”

But after seven years of waiting for the big break, he realised that his movie was never going to be made. So he retrieved the recordings and wrote to the Chief Minister about the conversation he had overheard.

A month passed with no response from the CM's office.

Having heard of Dileep’s “vengeful nature,” Balachandrakumar’s fear reached a feverish pitch and he decided that he could not wait any longer.

In December 2021, he gave an interview to Reporter TV, during which the channel broadcast parts of the recordings.

The police asked for the trial to be paused so they could investigate Balachandrakumar’s claims further. Dileep responded with a livid letter to the Director General of the Police. He opposed any further investigation. Dileep claimed that the audio clips were recorded by mimicry artists to frame him.

The conversations Balachandrakumar recorded also revolved around an alleged plan to murder the police officials investigating this case. “All five officials, watch what you’re going to get. Sudharshan (the then Kerala Crime Branch superintendent of police) who laid a hand on my body — his hand should be cut off,” a voice purportedly that of Dileep’s can be heard saying in one clip.

In another audio clip, a person can be heard talking about the possibility and cost of getting a truck to run over Baiju Paulose, the Deputy Superintendent who is the investigating officer of the case.

In his petitions to the court, Dileep called Balachandrakumar a “failed director” and denied any closeness to him. He said that most of the tapes were fabricated.

A new case was registered in January 2022 and Dileep's house was raided by the Kerala Crime Branch.

An audio clip, which was recovered during this raid, pertained to Manju Warrier. The clip comprised a two-hour long conversation between Dileep’s lawyer and the actor’s brother, Anoop.

In the recording, the lawyer was instructing Anoop on how to discredit Manju's testimony about Dileep's affair with Kavya, by attacking her character.

The lawyer encouraged Anoop to blatantly lie that Manju had been influenced by friends to drink alcohol. And to elaborate that Manju was slowly wanting to resume her career.

According to Dileep’s team, these were the reasons for the divorce.

Meanwhile, Balachandrakumar’s allegations gave rise to another question: were the contents of the memory card with visuals of the sexual assault copied while it was in the custody of the court?

In January 2020, an expert at the State Forensic Science Lab (FSL) in Thiruvananthapuram found that the hash value of the memory card had changed.

A hash value is like a fingerprint, a unique value attached to digital files. According to India’s IT laws, after police officials seize an electronic device, they are meant to record the hash value of the device in the seizure report.

In this case, a change in the value likely meant that something in the memory card had either been modified or tampered with.

This forensic report was submitted to Judge Honey Varghese. Oddly, the judge never revealed the existence of the report in the court, until the police stumbled upon its existence two years later, in 2022.

The Kerala High Court then asked for another forensic analysis. This time, the forensic lab found that the memory card was illegally accessed three times — by a magistrate, the personal assistant of the Ernakulam District Judge, and a trial court official. (This matter is now being heard by the HC.)

Balachandrakumar’s revelations gave Gayathri a flicker of hope.

In January 2022, a month after Balachandrakumar’s allegations and five years after the sexual assault, Gayathri broke her silence via Instagram.

Even though most people in Kerala knew that the crime had been committed against her, until then, she had never publicly identified herself as the survivor.

Before the new allegations surfaced, Gayathri said in an interview to Mojo Story, she often felt like dropping the case. The abuse she faced from Dileep's supporters and the process of seeking justice had entirely eroded her faith in the system, she said.

But the new evidence also suggested a much scarier reality.

It forced Gayathri to live with the permanent fear that the videos, which she believed only the court had access to, could now possibly be leaked to the public.

The trial recommenced after a new case of conspiracy to murder police officers was registered against Dileep, some of his family members and his friend Sharath.

Chapter 8: A Revolution Begins
Prayaga Martin began working in films when she was 12 years old. Most of her memories of school and college were of running from class to film sets and studying between shots.

In 2017, Prayaga, all of 22, was ready to be launched as a lead actor. Everything that she had dreamt of, worked towards, and planned for, was now within reach.

She was about to get her big break with Ramaleela, which she had spent one year shooting for. She played the heroine opposite Dileep. The superstar had apparently asked for her to be his romantic interest in the film.

“I’m close friends with his daughter, and he treated me like a child on set. He’s like a mentor to me,” she told me.

By February 2017, when the sexual assault happened, Dileep and Prayaga had finished shooting for Ramaleela.

Within a few months, Dileep went to jail.

“I wasn’t even sure if the film would be released,” Prayaga said. However, the producer decided that she would promote the film, which would be released when Dileep stepped out of prison.

“So I did it. I went everywhere and held down the fort. I was asked about Dileep in every single interview, feminist groups trolled me for working with him, and somehow, everyone forgot that this was my movie too. This was my break,” she said.

Prayaga found herself being written into a moment in history — except it wasn’t the kind of history she had dreamt of making. She had to promote a film in which the hero was a man accused of conspiring to sexually assault another actor.

After the crime, an ache that had been churning in the underbelly of the Malayalam film industry, rushed upward like bile.

By September 2017, the hashtag #Avalkoppam — meaning ‘With her’ — began circulating on social media. Women came out in support of Gayathri and also shared stories of their own endured trauma of sexual violence.

It was as though old wounds, which had been hurriedly stitched over, were suddenly slicing themselves open.

“When you start building a support system for one survivor, you realise that we’re all survivors in one way or another,” said the actor Padmapriya.

On May 18, 2017, fourteen women from the film industry met the Chief Minister and submitted a memorandum of demands. The women had had enough. They wanted the government to set up mechanisms to ensure gender justice, establish redressal cells, and install sexual harassment committees at work places.

They formed the Women in Cinema Collective (WCC), a first-of-its-kind association within Indian cinema. It intended to look into the welfare and safety concerns of women in the Malayalam film industry.

On his part, the Chief Minister constituted the Hema Committee under the chairpersonship of a retired judge, Justice K Hema. The intention was to listen to accounts of gender injustices, record instances of abuse, and introduce policies that would reform the film industry.

Kerala was going through a Weinstein-level moment that predated the global #MeToo campaign. However, the women received a fraction of the coverage that their counterparts in the West got.

Even within India, very few people outside Kerala knew about the extent of the rot.

“Until #MeToo happened, everyone including the media was portraying us as people speaking an alien language,” said Padmapriya.

For the women of Kerala, it was a significant moment — they had a voice, they were being heard, their pain was being considered ‘news’, and the state government was promising to address their concerns through the Hema Committee.

A much-awaited catharsis seemed to be in sight.

Woman after woman sat in front of the three-bench panel and revisited their trauma. At the end of 2019, a 5,000-page report, which reflected on the experiences of nearly 40 women, was submitted to the Chief Minister.

The dream that women across the world were seeing was potentially going to turn into a reality in Kerala. Dileep’s case had triggered one of the most subversive feminist movements in India. It seemed like Kerala would now live to witness the grand fall of abusive, powerful men.

Except, the revolution, which began with hope, also ended at hope. The Hema Committee report was not released.

According to the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952, a commission report has to be tabled in the Legislative Assembly within six months. When this was raised by the opposition in Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan’s stoic response was “The Hema Committee does not come under the Commissions of Inquiry Act.”

The opposition questioned why a government committee, which spent nearly Rs 50 lakh of the taxpayers’ money, was set up without legal powers. Dozens of Right To Information requests were filed by journalists and activists who sought a copy of the report.

The state government turned down the requests, citing the privacy of women who had spoken to the committee. Then, it said that the findings of the report ran into thousands of pages so it was “too huge” to be tabled.

The women have consistently maintained that the report can still be released without revealing the identities of the survivors.

Finally, in May 2022, the government released a one-and-half page document that summarised the recommendations of the committee. But the contents of the document were so vague that none of the stakeholders, including the WCC, could figure out what was implied.

The women who testified said they felt cheated. The WCC expressed their disappointment that the painful truth of many women was silenced once again.

​​”If the report comes out and a policy is made based on it, many criminals in the film industry will have to face consequences,” actor Parvathy, a member of WCC, told TNM in an interview.

When I reached out to retired Justice Hema, she said, “I’m tired. Just leave me alone.”

The Kerala Left Front government's decision to drag its feet on the report raised a question — who really was being protected and why?

This whole time, many men resisted the feminist movement. Director Lal Jose, for instance, expressed solidarity by sharing a poster of Dileep's film with the hashtag #Avanodoppam, meaning ‘With him.’

As if to remind women of their place, many men who had remained silent came out and called the whole campaign one big hysterical performance.

Mohanlal, one of Kerala’s most revered actors and the president of AMMA, trivialised the entire resistance. “We should not consider this as a movement. It is a fad, a fashion,” he said. When a journalist questioned him, he chuckled and said, “We can also come out with #MeToo. Gender wise, we should also start #MeToo.”

Supporters of Dileep offered what they believed were complicated but justifiable reasons for standing by the actor.

Meanwhile, women who were vocal came to be called “feminichi” — a newly-coined Malayali-English term intended to be an insult.

Those who spoke up on issues of gender injustices were reduced to caricatures, typecast as perennially angry, men-hating feminists who were difficult to work with.

Women actors I spoke to recalled that their male colleagues began deploying #MeToo as a weapon to belittle and isolate them. “Who knows, you might #MeToo me” became a common refrain used against women.

Actor Aswathy Manoharan recalled overhearing two production controllers saying, “What do these women think will happen? If we want, we can just throw them out of the industry.”

“Since I was not very vocal at that point, I was told that I am a good girl for not being a troublemaker,” Aswathy said.

Another well-known actor, who chose to remain anonymous, told me of how men turned their culpability into a punchline. He recalled a powerful man saying on set, “Oh if she’s going to accuse me of #MeToo for this, then just imagine how many (#MeToos) I would have gotten by now.”

Meanwhile, AMMA, the artistes’ body, exposed its own patriarchal politics — they reinstated Dileep in June 2018. The WCC announced that they had lost faith in the apex body.

Public outrage ensued. The mounting pressure moved the needle. In October 2018, Dileep voluntarily resigned from AMMA. But he continued to hold important positions in other unions such as the FEUOK and the Kerala Film Producers Association (KFPA).

Prayaga Martin’s film with Dileep ended up being a hit.

When we spoke on Dileep, she oscillated between being grateful for his mentorship and professing her solidarity with the women's movement. “Honestly, I don’t really know what happened,” she said. Like the entire industry, she too wanted the verdict to come out so that she could “make up her mind.”

Among Dileep’s supporters, whenever I would press on about why someone thought Dileep was innocent, I would be met with responses like — “Why would someone as smart as Dileep do something so shabbily?”

Shobi Thilakan — a senior dubbing artist, who recently worked for a film starring Dileep — said that a crime committed in this manner was not consistent with Dileep’s style. “Wouldn’t it be stupidity if he did it this way? Dileep is not a stupid man,” he said.

By the end of my reporting, it seemed like the question that concerned many in the industry was not how a crime of this magnitude had been committed under their watch, or whether Dileep was actually behind it.

What most people wanted to know was whether or not Dileep was a smart man.

Chapter 9: Shroud of Silence
Mani said that he was disturbed by one thing in particular.

After he was arrested, the first thing he told his wife was that he was innocent. He said he had been trapped, and that he had even “apologised” to Gayathri. “Can you believe it? She never told the court that I said sorry. I felt like a fool in front of my wife,” Mani said, and added, “Gayathri really betrayed me.”

There seemed to be little space for Gayathri's trauma in Mani’s self-righteous outrage.

We had finished our conversation and he offered to drop me off for my next interview. He watched me carefully through the rearview mirror of his auto. I asked him if he was scared of speaking about the case or of Dileep.

The question seemed to amuse him. He instinctively sharpened his moustache and said, “No, I’m not scared of anyone.”

Yet, over the next few weeks, he called me thrice, asking if I had been sent by someone or if I would land him in trouble. He would then profusely apologise for his fear.

When powerful men are accused of gruesome crimes, the immediate uproar that follows is duly documented. But then, almost always, a shroud of silence descends over the world that they preside over.

Slowly, but systematically, the traumatised woman becomes a supporting character in her own story.

How do we qualify this silence?

In Dileep’s case, this silence came from multiple places. Ultimately, it defined the shape and extent of the power he wielded in the industry.

Perhaps the silence was also reciprocal. Many people I spoke to referred to Dileep’s well-known reputation as the ‘“secret-keeper” of the industry.

This, they said, meant that he knew of the financial dealings of some of the most powerful people within the ecosystem.

When people I reached out to declined to speak to me for this story, I often asked them what they were afraid of. Two of the most common reasons were — “Dileep is capable of anything” and “I want to continue working in the industry. I don't want to lose work opportunities.”

A conversation with one of the founding members of the WCC revealed the fissures left behind by the revolution. Many of the women who had spoken up then struggled to find work. Ultimately, the member said, it felt like everyone, including the accused, had found a way to move on and work. “Meanwhile, many of us are stuck in this strange limbo, with no real work,” she said.

Manju Warrier’s friend Saritha, who also works in the industry, said that she was dropped from at least five projects because she was known to be ‘anti-Dileep’. “One of the project managers told me that it is best for them if they don’t hire me,” she said.

Gayathri's assault and the cover-up that followed revealed what most people in the industry already knew. Even as Malayalam films spoke the language of inclusivity and garnered laurels across the country, many within the industry continued to enable prejudicial structures, rigid power hierarchies, and gaping imbalances of power.

A sense of anxiety simmered under the breath of everyone who spoke up or testified against Dileep. Often, that anxiety seemed to spill over into the territory of paranoia.

Many of the people I spoke to, some of whom were witnesses in the case, felt they were being followed, watched, and that their phones were being tapped. TB Mini, one of Gayathri’s lawyers, recently went on record saying she feared for her life.

Gayathri's relative Ashwin said that he was advised to change his car as Dileep's team now knew of the car he used.

Balachandrakumar told me he lived with the constant suspicion that Dileep would harm him.

Director Baiju Kottarakara, who regularly speaks against Dileep, believed that there had been an attempt to kill him. Once in 2018, while Baiju was in his secluded house in the Idukki district of Kerala, someone broke into his compound. The next morning, he found one of his dogs beaten to death.

A few people I interviewed referred to the death of Saleesh Vettiyattil, a mobile shop owner and short film director. Saleesh had serviced Dileep’s phone after he was accused in the sexual assault case.

In August 2020, while he was on his way back home, Saleesh met with an accident and died. His brother filed a complaint seeking an investigation into his death. He suspected that Saleesh had been eliminated for knowing too much about Dileep.

When I asked advocate Ramesh (name changed), who had been on Gayathri’s legal team, if he experienced fear, he smirked and said, “I don’t go for morning walks or things like that. So I’m not worried.”

Most of these accounts of paranoia existed in the realm of whispered gossip. Apart from witnesses turning hostile, and allegations of one witness being kidnapped from the court by Dileep’s associates, there had been no evidence to suggest that the actor actually harmed those who spoke against him.

But this hushed caution offered him a shield of silence.

Even among those who spoke up about Dileep, there was always a line. Most of them were willing to talk as long as they didn’t have to introspect about their own role in shaping the patriarchal environment.

Seven years since February 2017, the Kerala film industry, which never really recovered, seemed to have found a way to exist in a limbo. Very few had chosen to sit in the personal, professional, and emotional discomfort caused by this case.

Chapter 10: The Elephant and the Squirrel
Shobana Surendran, Pulsar Suni's mother, was suffocating in this discomfort.

In a small house on an uphill road about 70 km from Kochi, she led a quiet life with her granddaughter. Every shop, every road, every house, every person walking up to the lane that led to her house knew who she was. They let her be.

Some pitied her, some wondered about the kind of mother she was.

Every few months, she would wake up extra early to cook a special dish with coconut and onion. She would pack the tiffin, take a bus, and make her way to the Ernakulam District Jail in Kakkanad. “He likes the dish with extra onion,” she said.

Sometimes her granddaughter accompanied her to the prison, sometimes her daughter. “He gets very sad when he sees me,” said the granddaughter about her uncle Pulsar Suni.

The family members usually met each other for about 10 minutes. Suni often spoke to them from behind an iron grill. A jail was no place for a seven-year-old girl to visit, Shobana said. But it was only when she took her granddaughter along that the police allowed Pulsar Suni to meet them without the grill in between.

In the seven years since he had been imprisoned, Pulsar Suni was granted bail once, for three days, when his father passed away. The father and son used to be close but after Suni’s arrest, his father refused to see him.

“He was very upset with him. He died in that silence,” Shobana said.

She looked toward the dining table that Pulsar Suni sat at and ate his meals when he came out on bail. On the table was a newspaper with his face on it.

As she looked out the door, she recounted that when he was younger, Pulsar Suni was a paperboy. “Everyone knew him here,” she said. A few years before the crime, Suni moved to Kochi to work as a driver for celebrities. He would try to come home every month. “He likes his sister very much. Every time he came from Kochi, he would bring her new clothes, even those that she would never wear,” Shobhana said.

Before her son assaulted Gayathri, Shobhana said she had been dreaming of getting him married.

“Everyone in this case got bail, why is it that only my son is inside?” she asked and added, “Would you like one more spoon of sugar?”

As she stirred my lemon juice quietly, Shobana had a distant look. It was a distance that never left her eyes. That is how she seemed to feel — distant from her son, her daughter, her deceased husband, and even herself.

Shobana had met Suni two weeks before I visited her in February 2024. “He has become weak and tired. He doesn’t talk much about the case,” she said, dabbing her eyes.

Shobana was careful with her words. Not once, even in her all encompassing grief, did she say that her son was innocent.

I followed up with another question — “Did you ever ask him why he did it?”

“He says he got trapped — that he was forced to and that it had been planned two years before (the crime),” she said.

For a long time, Shobana had refused to believe that her son had committed the crime. However, once when she visited him along with her daughter, Suni sat with his head in his hands, unable to meet his sister’s eyes. “That’s when I knew it…he had done it,” Shobana said.

Pulsar Suni’s sister is around the same age as Gayathri. Suni asked his sister to forget about him and not visit him anymore. “I feel bad for Gayathri. I also have a daughter…,” Shobana said.

As we continued speaking, Shobana asked me multiple times if someone had sent me, if I really was a reporter, and why I was meeting her. “I am paranoid. I feel like Dileep’s team secretly sends people to our house. I don’t trust anyone.”

I asked her whether she ever got angry with Pulsar Suni for what he did. “You know, every time I pack his tiffin and leave from here to see him in jail, I leave in anger. But when I get there and see him, I’m in tears,” she said.

Most people, Shobana said, were conflicted about what to say to her. While she was innocent, her son was not. They felt sorry for her, but somewhere, they also held her accountable as a parent.

As we sat in silence, Shobana suddenly recalled something. “One day, while I was sitting next to my son in court, he turned to me with empty eyes and said — ‘Amma, nothing is going to happen in my case. I’m in now. This is a case about an elephant playing a squirrel.’”

The morning after I met Shobana, I received a call from an unknown number. The woman on the other end introduced herself as Pulsar Suni’s sister. “Why did you go see my mother? Who are you? What do you want?” — she rained questions on me.

After I answered, she sighed. “I fought with my mother for speaking to you. You have to understand, we’re terrified,” she said.

When I asked her what exactly she was scared of, she fell silent.

Chapter 11: Meeting Dileep
It was February 2024, seven years since the sexual assault, and exactly 76 months since Dileep’s release from jail. He had starred in nearly 15 films since then, including one with popular actor Tamannaah Bhatia. (TNM reached out to Tamannaah, but she was unavailable for an interview.)

I had been trying to interview Dileep for four months. Despite multiple attempts, I had not been able to secure a meeting with him. I was told that since the case, Dileep had been very careful about his media interactions.

While Dileep was promoting his film Thankamani, I managed to join a crowd of reporters waiting to interview him at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Kochi. I watched as he meticulously unhooked the lapel mike pinned to his collar and slithered it out from under his shirt. He had just finished his fourth interview of the day and had eight more to go.

For nearly six hours, I remained in the background, observing as he went from one interview to another within the hotel.

At around 5 feet 4 inches, Dileep hardly cut a towering figure in person. Throughout the day, he never raised his voice.

His sense of power emerged from the way he held his unwavering gaze. His beard, the slight dark circles under his eyes, and tired smile gave the impression of a very busy man who had taken out his valuable time to be where he was — his presence demanded gratitude implicitly. He also seemed to have the ability to keep you in splits and make you feel jittery at the same time.

After each interview, the reporter, cameraperson, light boy, and every other assistant on the set would crowd around the actor for a selfie. Amid the chaos of promotions, interviews, and ensuing fanfare, Dileep appeared calm, observant, and sharp.

Before the case, Dileep had a close relationship with the media. He was known for his humorous and free-wheeling interactions with reporters. After 2017, he only spoke to channels that supported him and did not ask him tough questions about the case.

But Dileep couldn’t help himself. He used every possible opportunity to indirectly refer to the case. He would call it his “tough period,” joke about his current inability to judge people’s loyalties, or speak at length about his struggles with mental health issues.

With accusations of conspiring a sexual assault hanging heavy in the air, one would assume that Dileep would be careful about the people he surrounded himself with. But as I found out, the ongoing case did not seem to have imposed any such sense of caution.

At around 1 pm on February 28, 2024, Dileep took a break from doing promotional interviews and retired to his room for lunch.

I made my way to the cafe of the hotel to wait. Two men sat with their whiskeys, just across from my table. One of them sauntered over, towered over me, and introduced himself. His alcohol-laced breath stung.

“I am the villain in this new Dileep film,” he slurred.

John Vijay is a senior Tamil actor, who has worked in over 100 films across languages including Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, and Hindi.

During the #MeToo movement in 2018, he was accused of sexual misconduct. Industry insiders suggested that there were more such cases.

John apologised, but with caveats. According to him, his jokes were being misunderstood. He claimed that he did not remember any of the incidents. The lesson he learned from the allegations, he said, was “to know what to say to whom and when.”

That afternoon, at the hotel cafe in Kochi, unaware of who he was, I too introduced myself. Since he had mentioned that he was working with Dileep, I asked him if I could interview him for my story. I explained that I was writing a piece about Dileep: his case, his rise, fall, and eventual comeback.

“It’s a good thing you’re pretty, otherwise you would sound really dumb right now,” he laughed and touched my cheek. I pulled back.

“Have a drink with me?” he asked.

I declined.

John proceeded to praise Dileep as one of the finest actors of our time. He then called his wife and asked her to send me his own resume. “I’m sharing my resume with you so that you know who I am. If my CV goes out anywhere, I will personally come and shoot you. I’m a guy who owns estates so I have access to guns,” he said and laughed.

Next, John called up Dileep and said, “There’s a girl here. You must meet her.”

After months of trying to get an interview with Dileep, I told myself that this was my chance. We took the elevator up to the 14th floor of the Crowne Plaza.

Dileep was having lunch in his room. He requested that I wait until he was finished.

Outside, the entire floor was empty. I sat down on a couch at the hotel lobby to wait. John stepped out of Dileep’s room and plopped himself next to me. I moved to the edge of the seat.

As he asked me to sit back and relax, John continued to praise Dileep. He then asked, “Have you ever been naked with any man?”

When I refused to answer, he made a demand — “Come with me to my room. Have a drink. Let’s wait there.”

I said no.

“Why are you so uncomfortable? You think I’ll do something to you? I won’t, just come,” he persisted.

After an extremely uncomfortable 15 minutes, I got up to leave. Dileep stepped out of his room at the same time. All three of us took the elevator to the ground floor. “Let’s speak after these interviews?” Dileep asked, and I said okay.

When we hit the ground floor, I quickly stepped out of the elevator while John followed me. Dileep went ahead of us into the crowd of waiting journalists. “Come with me, come to my room. If you don’t, I can assure you that you will not get your interview. Just come,” John continued.

I walked away, shocked. I wondered why, even for the sake of posturing, there was no interest in trying to make it seem like a safe environment. (TNM reached out to John Vijay, but he did not respond to our questions.)

Determined to interview Dileep, I returned the next day. John Vijay was not around.

After he finished a promotional interview, Dileep finally turned to me and said, “Let’s talk, but I hope you know I can’t talk about the case.”

That same morning, the Kerala High Court had issued an order that it would not cancel Dileep’s bail. His manager whispered this to the actor.

He smiled, relieved.

Rolling up the sleeve of his black shirt, he gathered his white mundu, pulled his chair closer to mine, and sat down. With no cameras around us, he comfortably extended his legs.

“How has your comeback been since the bail?” I started.

“Comeback? I haven’t gone anywhere,” he said. “Even during the time that I didn’t do movies, I was still in the limelight. You get what I mean?”

He went on to explain that he was a man with a lot of responsibilities — acting, promoting his films, taking care of association issues, attending to the requirements of his case, and being a father.

When I asked him how he felt when the people of Kerala went against him during the initial days of the case, he stopped me mid-sentence.

“It was a small group of people attacking me,” he said. “The power of jealousy, you see…”

He made constant references to how he was “always learning a lesson” when people stabbed him in the back, or how people’s prayers were what “kept me going.” In Dileep’s telling, all he had ever done in his life was to “try and make people laugh.”

While speaking of the women’s movement, he expressed complete confusion. He said that it baffled him that he had been referred to as someone who was against women or feminism.

“People of this land know how much I respect women. In fact, there are more women in my house than men,” he said.

Dileep was thankful to the associations within the industry. “I myself resigned from different associations because I did not want people to be troubled because of me. But despite these pressures, these associations never left my side. So I should also stand by them, right?”

While speaking about himself, Dileep appeared to embody a god-like disposition. He harped on about how people “needed” him, how they performed religious rituals for his sake, how he didn’t like to see people “suffer,” and how he was “duty-bound” to stand by his people.

In a tangential reference to the case, he said he was still coping with how surreal life had turned out for him. “I’ve only seen such things in movies,” he told me.

Finally, when he did address the case head-on, it was in the context of his elder daughter. “I am fighting this case for her. I live my life for her,” he said.

In the months following our conversation, Dileep did multiple interviews for his film’s promotions. His conversations grew bolder, more brazen.

In a recent interview, a gushing male reporter claimed that women actors Dileep worked with eventually became big stars — attributing their success to Dileep.

The reporter named three actors in the industry as examples.

Dileep interrupted him. He had names of his own to add. “Oh there are more — Manju Warrier, Kavya Madhavan, and Gayathri.” It was as if he wanted to remind everyone that it was he who made the careers of his former wife, current wife, and the woman whose sexual assault he was accused of having masterminded.

*********

TNM had sent detailed questionnaires to Dileep, his managers, and advocate Raman Pillai. We also reached out to the actor’s friends including film producer Vyasan Edavanakkad, hotel owner Sarath G Nair - a co-accused in the second conspiracy case against Dileep, director B Unnikrishnan, and bar owner Baiju Ramakrishnan. They either refused to comment or didn’t respond to texts and calls. We met Nadirsha, a close friend of Dileep’s, who spoke to us about an upcoming film of his but refused to talk about the case.

Megha Mukundan contributed towards the research for this article.

All illustrations by Shambhavi Thakur.

Photos of Dileep in police custody, the day he was released, and at his wedding with Kavya from Nithin Krishnan.

Photos of Dileep’s younger days from KS Prasad.