After Bengali actress Sreelekha Mitra, a Kerala man has accused Malayalam film director Ranjith of sexually abusing him. The accused said the incident happened in 2012 in a five-star hotel in Bengaluru.
The man revealed to a local Malayalam channel that he met the director for the first time in Kerala's Kozhikode when the latter was shooting for a movie titled 'Bavuttiyude Namathil'. He managed to meet Ranjith and told him about his interest in acting in movies. Ranjith responded by giving him his contact number with instructions to text and not call.
He texted Ranjith and was invited by the filmmaker to meet him at a hotel in Bengaluru. When he arrived at the hotel, the receptionist informed him that the visit hours were over, but Ranjith asked him to get in via the back entrance. He met Ranjith inside the room and found him in an inebriated state.
The man alleged that Ranjith forced him to drink alcohol before urging him to strip. "The director said he wanted to see how I looked without clothes in a mirror and wanted to take some pictures to show his girlfriend who was also an actor and stayed in the same room," the man charged.
The victim said he was sexually abused by the director, who avoided him after the incident. The man said he was traumatised by the assault and decided to come forward with a complaint after the Hema Committee report was released. He added that he complained to a prominent actress in Malayalam about the incident but she ignored his laments.
The latest allegations come just two days after a case was registered against Ranjith after Sreelekha Mitra filed a complaint against him with the Kochi City Police Commissioner. Mitra alleged that Ranjith had touched her inappropriately with sexual intent after inviting her to act in the movie Paleri Manikyam in 2009. Kochi Police Commissioner S Syamsundar said a case under IPC Section 354 (assault or criminal force on woman with intent to outrage her modesty) has been registered against Ranjith.