The legal noose is tightening around absconding Malayalam film actor-cum-producer Vijay Babu over a sexual harassment case. A local court in Kochi has issued an arrest warrant against him as a prelude to requesting Interpol to issue a Red Notice.
A Red Notice is issued by Interpol on request of law enforcers of a country to seek the arrest or provisional arrest of wanted criminals with the intention of extradition.
Following the issuance of the arrest warrant, photographs of Vijay Babu along with the details of the case against him will appear on the website of Interpol in the coming days.
Once a Red Notice is issued, Dubai Police will be able to legally detain the actor and extradite him to India. However, the police are not ruling out the chances of Vijay Babu crossing over to some other country, which does not have an agreement with India on extradition.
The move by the police to move for a Red Notice would affect the OTT release of the films in which Vijay Babu is associated. OTT platforms that have foreign collaborations usually do not purchase or screen films with which an accused in a sexual harassment case is associated.
The police probe team received legal advice to hand over a copy of the arrest warrant against Vijay Babu to OTT platforms such as Amazon Prime and Netflix.
Hindi actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who was co-accused in a domestic violence case in which his brother was the main accused, faced a ban from OTT platforms even after he received bail in the case.
Only after Siddiqui was acquitted by the court, did various OTT platforms agree to buy the movies in which he acted.
(This article was first published in onmanorama.)