Tamil filmmaker Leena Manimekalai made sexual harassment allegations against Tamil film director Susi Ganesan through a Facebook post recently. She followed it with questioning the suspicious silence that the Tamil film industry has assumed in the #MeToo movement.

In a recent press conference, Manimekalai said that those who stay silent all this while are in fact helping the perpetrators of the crime and are the ones who themselves have something to hide. “If they are going to continue like this, my suspicions grow strong,” said Manimekalai.

Earlier this year, Manimekalai had talked about how the alleged abduction and rape of a Malayali actress in her own car had triggered the memories of her horrid experience with a film director in 2005. While she refrained from naming the film director back then, she has finally come out with his name now.

In a Facebook post, she narrated the entire incident. She wrote that it all transpired in 2005. Back then she worked as an anchor with a Tamil television channel in Chennai. That day she had an interview with Ganesan, had just wrapped it up, and was waiting for an auto outside the studio. That is when Ganesan stopped by with his car and offered to give her a lift.

“Without any suspicion, I got in,” she wrote. While the conversation in the first few moments went well. The director suddenly pressed the central lock in the car, snatched and switched off my mobile phone and threw it away,” she shared.

She further wrote that the director then threatened and told her that she has to go to his home. “I was petrified. I politely requested him to open the car [doors] first. Later, I begged and screamed saying I will break the windows,” she wrote.

He, however, did not pay any heed to her and continued driving. This is when she was reminded of the small knife that she had kept in her bag for emergency situations and fished it out immediately and demanded him to stop the car. That is when “he allowed me to step out of the car,” she wrote.

While she managed to get out of the situation, it left her utterly petrified. She did not report it to anyone, neither did she raise the matter to the media house where she was working. “This experience belittled me. I was scared my parents will not allow me to work in broadcast media,” she said.

Manimekalai added, “It is the #metoo movement that has given me the courage to speak out now.” She also said that the movement is the “weapon” that the women in the country have waited for all this while to fight the sexual predators.

H/T: Scroll