Actor Sona M Abraham was a part of a Malayalam film named For Sale seven years ago. The 2013 film revolved around a woman who ended her life after watching her little sister being blackmailed. Sona was 14-year-old when the movie was shot and had to do some uncomfortable shots.
According to the actor, the scenes were recorded privately using a hand camera and the film’s director (Satish Ananthapuri) and producer (Anto Kadavelil) had promised that the footage would be deleted after they used the relevant bits for the film.
She also told the media that the movie did have a proper script and scenes were shot randomly. It was during the course of the shooting that she and her family were informed that her character would have to enact a scene where she is shown being intimate with a man who later blackmails her with the footage.
Makers of the film assured her that the intimate scenes would be short but later after one year, the entire raw footage recorded on the hand camera surfaced on the internet, particularly on YouTube. Now it’s been seven years and Sona and her family are fighting to get the footage taken down from the internet, revealing serious flaws in the handling of online crimes, especially against women, by authorities.
In a recent interview, Sona said “In 2014, I had approached the Ernakulam City Police Commissioner’s officer to get the clipping removed from YouTube. The officials said that YouTube would take down the scene if they sent a request letter signed by the Commissioner. At the time, they did not lodge an FIR or take down a complaint.”
Later, the scenes were deleted from YouTube but got resurfaced on porn sites and social media. “The raw footage includes behind the scenes clips including conversations I had with the director. It now looks like we were shooting for an adult film, when that was not the case at all,” she said.
Sona and her mother then filed a complaint at the Ernakulam North Police Station in 2016, naming For Sale’s director, producer and editor as the accused but they are not sure and said they take no respinsibilty for it.
“If you look at the context of the scene in the story, it was a rape. They told us that only a 30 second clipping will be used. The footage would not have leaked without their knowledge as they held the rights to it. Hence, adding them to the FIR seemed appropriate. I also requested in the complaint that the scenes be taken down from the internet. My complaint was transferred to the cyber cell and I was promised that action would be taken,” Sona added.
“I was a minor when the film was shot and when the recorded footage was leaked. This would attract relevant sections of POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act, as well as the Information Technology (IT), Act section 67 B. The sections were not added and it helped the accused acquire a station bail soon after their arrest,” Sona said.
In 2016, the actor approached the Kerala High Court with a writ petition in 2016, asking for the footage to be erased from the internet and demanding that stronger sections be added to the FIR against the film’s director, producer and editor.
Later, she received calls from the Women’s Commission in Kerala and the Hi-Tech cell of the Kerala police which deals with cybercrimes. The brave actor took to social media recently and talked about the same, watch the video here:
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