New book by Nidhi Suresh to explore sexual violence cases unmasking Malayalam cinema

New Delhi: With the Kerala film industry rocked by a #MeToo wave, a new book will look at multiple cases of sexual violence, including the one that unmasked Malayalam cinema.

A Suitable Agency will represent journalist Nidhi Suresh's forthcoming book on sexual violence. The idea of the yet-to-be-named book comes at the back of Suresh's reporting for six years on multiple sexual assault cases.

The tipping point was her 10-month-long investigation into the sexual assault of a top female actor in the Malayalam cinema.

In February 2017, a well-known female actor was sexually assaulted in Kochi by six hired criminals. Dileep, a superstar actor, has been accused of orchestrating this crime.

The case ignited, not just a resistance but an existential crisis in a state which is often looked upon as one of India's most progressive places. This is a story which pushed Kerala to the edge.

It triggered a Weinstein scale movement which predated the global #MeToo campaign.

The Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) was set up in 2017 and forced the Kerala government to constitute the Justice K Hema Committee which recorded the testimonies of working conditions of women in Malayalam cinema.

The report was not public for five years. A redacted version was released this August.

This has now set off a second wave of #MeToo movement within Kerala.

"What the domino effect of (the) 2017 sexual assault really does is that it forces us to reckon with ourselves. It pushes us to reflect on our own ecosystems and the way these conversations play out within our own intimate spaces. I spent most of my school years in Kerala.

"My own first encounters with intimacy and abuse took place in Kerala. As a Malayalee living in Delhi, I've always struggled to explain the shape and extent of patriarchy in Kerala," Suresh said.

In the book, the author will deep dive to expose workings of the patriarchal power structures that enable sexual violence and how they attempt to control and manipulate the ensuing narratives thereafter, acoording to a statement.