Thrissur, June 15: The Trivandrum Press Club, a powerful organization comprising 500 media persons from the capital city of Kerala, has been found wanting for allowing a journalist accused in a moral policing case, to continue as its secretary.
The journalist, named M Radhakrishnan has been accused of forcefully barging into the house of a woman colleague, playing moral police, and threatening her and her children.
Radhakrishnan was recently dismissed from his organization, reputed Malayalam daily Kerala Kaumudi, once the due process of a legal enquiry was completed. The woman journalist received a copy of the termination letter last week, and for the first time, opened up about what exactly happened, and its aftermath, in a mail to the email group of the press club.
The incident in question occurred on the eve of November 30, 2019. The woman journalist, an employee of Kerala Kaumudi, was at her home with her two small children, resting after work. One of her male colleagues who had visited her had just left. All of a sudden, a group of men pushed open her front door and barged into the house, dragging with them the male colleague, she informed in her mail.
Heading the group was Radhakrishnan, incidentally a resident of the same neighbourhood. Radhakrishnan shoved the male colleague in front of the woman and demanded that she admit to an extramarital relationship. ‘I won’t tell anyone, not even your husband, but tell the truth,’ he repeatedly said and started questioning her two frightened children, before searching the entire house, as if looking for other ‘men’. He then pushed the woman and her two children into a bedroom and locked the door, and started beating up the male colleague, accusing him and the woman of an illicit relationship in the absence of her husband. As the distraught woman tried calling her husband, also a journalist,
Radhakrishnan suddenly seemed disturbed, she writes and tried to stop her. Later he called her husband himself, saying he has ‘settled the issue and he needn’t come. However, her husband came over immediately and calmly told the group that the male colleague was a friend of their family. Upon hearing this, the group, who had by then terrorised the family for nearly an hour, dispersed.
While Radhakrishnan later claimed that the group with him were random people, the woman says they had all been called by Radhakrishnan and were not known to her at all. Two men from the group later said they did not know where they were being taken to by Radhakrishnan. According to the woman, she and Radhakrishnan were on cordial terms initially and he developed enmity towards her following minor issues involving the Kerala Union of Working Journalists (KUWJ) elections.
The next day, the woman and her husband filed a complaint against Radhakrishnan and his aides at the Pettah Police Station, at Kerala Kaumudi, and the KUWJ. While both organisations immediately suspended and eventually ousted Radhakrishnan, he continued to be Secretary of the Trivandrum Press Club. The woman had filed a complaint with the Press Club as well, of which she and her husband were members. The President, Sonichan P Joseph, called a meeting of the managing committee but no action was taken against the offender. It was also found that Radhakrishnan, who had been missing since the incident, was inside the Press Club, where he had told the members that he was only trying to protect a family from breaking apart.
In protest, a group of women, members of NWMI (Network of Women in Media) entered the Press Club building on the morning of December 5, 2019, and shouted slogans demanding that Radhakrishnan be arrested. The police were called and Radhakrishnan was immediately arrested and sections IPC 451 (house trespass), 341 (wrongful restraining), 354 (outraging the modesty of a woman, 354 (assault on woman) and 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) slapped on him.
But it was only when the enraged NWMI members took out a march from the secretariat to the Press Club a few days later that the Press Club finally suspend Radhakrishnan. It took another week and a general body meeting before the club also dismissed Radhakrishnan.
However, Radhakrishnan challenged the move legally, and the Munsiff court ordered that the status quo be maintained. The offender interpreted it that he is allowed to continue as secretary, and was soon seen heading events organised by the Press Club in the past few months, obviously with the compliance of other members. There is no clarity on how Radhakrishnan is allowed to be a member of the Press Club when he has ceased to be an employee of any media house.
“Forget about the legal loopholes, doesn’t the Press Club have a moral responsibility to side with the victim and not the perpetrator?” asks Sarita Balan, journalist and a member of the NWMI. While some of the Press Club members are supportive, most are silent and many continue to support Radhakrishnan, she alleges, a view echoed by the woman in her mail. A year and a half into the incident, her children are still traumatised by the incident. They get startled at the sound of the doorbell, and beg their parents to not open the door, she writes.
Meanwhile, a charge sheet has been issued by the police but nothing more has happened.
‘My family and I have been threatened by powerful aides of Radhakrishnan and I’m well aware they will continue to do so; even put an end to us altogether,’ she writes. The incident exposes the misogyny and ‘boys’ club’ attitudes of many such organisations in Kerala where even senior members do not hesitate to side with the powerful male offenders.