Nana Patekar, Dileep are 'narcissistic psychopaths': Tanushree Dutta on 'useless' Hema report
Commenting on the Hema Committee report on exploitation of women in the Malayalam film industry, Dutta said nothing will change as she had no trust in the system
Even as the Hema Committee report has opened a Pandora’s box on the exploitation of women in the Malayalam film industry, actor Tanushree Dutta, who famously filed a sexual harassment charge against Nana Patekar, brushed off the report as “useless”. She was frankly skeptical about whether it would bring about changes on the ground.
According to Dutta, “What’s the point of this new report anyway? All they had to do was arrest the accused and enforce a strong law and order system.” She was referring to the case in Kerala, in which a leading south Indian actress was kidnapped and sexually molested in a moving car.
Further, she asked what happened after the Vishakha Committee, which came up with so many guidelines and prepared many pages and pages of reports. “The names of the committees just keep changing," she said. Her comments seemed to indicate that nothing much would change in the film industry.
In September 2018, Dutta had given a media interview in which she alleged that Nana Patekar sexually harassed her on the sets of the 2009 film Horn Ok Pleasss, catalysing the Me Too movement in India, some people believe.
No trust
Reacting now to the Hema report, Dutta said that “people like Nana and Dileep (an accused in the Kerala sexual assault case of an actress) are narcissistic psychopaths”.
“There’s no cure for them. Only a vicious and vengeful man can do what they did,” she stressed, adding that she doesn’t care about these committees. She added that she had no trust in the system.
According to the former Miss Universe, these reports and committees are just wasting time rather than doing the real work.
“Having a safe workplace is a basic right for a woman — or any human being, for that matter,” she asserted. Dutta's best known Hindi films are 'Aashiq Banaya Aapne', 'Bhagam Bhag' and 'Dhol'.
Backlash and criticism
When Dutta came out and made the allegations against Patekar, she faced political backlash and criticism from artists in the Indian film industry.
Patnekar denied the accusations. In 2008 when she had filed a complaint against him with industry body CINTAA, they ignored her. The apology came a decade later in 2018 for not taking up her case back then.
Dutta claimed that her career was jeapordised after that and her film projects would never take off.
The Hema Report
The Hema committee was set up on a request from the Women In Cinema Collective following the 2017 incident in which a female Malayalam actor was sexually assaulted in a moving vehicle in Kochi. Actor Dileep was one of the accused in the case.
The report highlighted issues faced by women in the Malayalam film industry, including unwanted physical advances even before commencing work on a film and code names for women who would agree to compromise among other shameful details.
The panel found that the women in the industry were seriously exploited and forced to deal with intoxicated individuals knocking on their hotel doors, entering their rooms by force and facing threats to life for attempting to report such instances. Also, the women were denied basic rights such as access to toilets and changing rooms on sets.