Saturday 25 March 2017

What is SRFTI Hiding?

25th March 2017

Hello,
Please listen carefully. This is a very mucky mess. There is a larger nexus of students, professors, influential people, filmmakers etc involved and we, a small group of women are at the receiving end of this violence. We are aspiring filmmakers who have a lot to do, a lot of films to make. It is just not fair that our future is being trampled upon by such people who have all the power they need to crush us under their feet. So listen with your soul, please. 

2nd March 2017: Internal Complaints Committee for Sexual Harassment [ICC-SH] of Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute [SRFTI] submitted its report on a case I had filed against a professor. [The professor’s name has been made public in the media, I just don’t want to do that here.] Rape was ONE OF THE SEVERAL charges in my complaint. The complaint in its entirety was made public by me long ago when I was under a massive attack by the powers mentioned above. You can read it here.
Around the same time I also publicly came out as the rape complainant in SRFTI because people even publicly wondered if I was for real. The video can be found here

It is already very shameful that a sexual harassment complainant has to constantly prove herself right while the accused just have to wave their magic wands and say spells like ‘slut shame’, ‘relationship’, ‘seduced’, ‘jilted lover’ etc. So for the last time, I am making something clear: I was never in a relationship with that man. And nobody has the right to tell a woman something as stupid as ‘you could not have been raped because you were in a relationship with him’. Also, jilted-lover-getting-back-at-the-unsuspecting-professor theory would have made sense if he was the one who terminated the non consensual sex. [That was all there was to it except for his manipulation and coercion in so many levels]. It was me. Some time after he asked me if he could have a threesome with me and my then boyfriend. All right? 

Please keep in mind that SRFTI forwarded my complaint WITHOUT MY PERMISSION to the police and therefore I have to fight a court case now. That was on the charge of rape. The ICC-SH looked into charges OTHER THAN RAPE and submitted its report on March 2nd.
I have not been given the report yet even though it should have been done long ago. Ideally, depending upon the content of the report, action should have been taken by SRFTI. For example if the professor was not found guilty he should have been cleared of blame. If he had been found guilty subsequent action should have followed. This decision would have happened on 10th March, which was when the Governing Council [GC] meeting was scheduled. This is the meeting which was chaired by Amala Akkineni and had Madhu Bhandarkar! present. [The same Bollywood Director accused of rape and the complainant later mysteriously withdrew her complaint]. In this meeting instead of the action I mentioned, it was decided that the ICC-SH shall be dissolved! 

Kindly put two and two together. What is SRFTI hiding? Why have they not given the report to me? Why is it that in a meeting where the report should have been discussed and action taken on the professor, the body which submitted the report was dissolved? There are carcasses everywhere that it stinks so bad. Let me also point out that another case against another professor was also under investigation by the same ICC when the decision to dissolve it was taken. 

Soon after this is when a resurgence of slut shaming of me happened. My complaint against the professor which is a public document was one of those in which 90% of people yelled ‘She couldn’t have been raped’, because in some cozy corner the accused was casually waving his magic wand and whispering the spells i mentioned earlier. But one man cannot do it. He was supported by the vicious nexus of SRFTI and its power houses. Students who are usually powerless also become powerful and bare their teeth in arrogance when they have the backing of professors and higher authorities.
Soon after this Director Debamitra Mitra was so emboldened, she told my own mother that her daughter was staying with the professor and made the complaint only after that. She was so emboldened, that she wrote a group of feminists the exact words she told my mother. That women including me were ‘misusing’ the Sexual Harassment Act, we were ‘nefarious’ and ‘wayward’. Where is this power coming from? As an employee of Government of India, whatever your personal beliefs are, you will definitely think twice before saying that the Sexual Harassment Prevention in Workplaces Act is something which is being misused. Yet, she, forget being a government employee, certainly our government is in deeper shit, being a woman and a citizen dared say that. Where is she drawing her power from? Why is she confident that I could not have been raped even when ICC-SH had not even investigated the rape charge? Where is my report? Give it to me. What are you hiding? Show it to me.

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