Flooded with abusive calls, messages, alleges woman filmmaker

Madurai: A city-based woman activist-turned-documentary

filmmaker

has filed a petition with the city police against unknown people who have been allegedly abusing her over phone for the past few days.

Divya Bharathi, known for her documentary ‘Kakkoos’ based on the prevalence of the manual scavenging in the state and its caste angle, said that she has been flooded with over 1,000 phones calls and messages threatening her and family members in the past few days. This has caused her extreme mental agony, she said.

Divya Bharathi said that she is baffled over why she is being targeted all of a sudden as the documentary was released way back in February. She met mediapersons on Monday to share her plight. While the city police have assured to help her by taking measures to stop the messages, they expressed their inability from saving her from the phone calls.

Divya Bharathi said that she is being targeted only after she was arrested last week in connection with a 2009 students’ protest which took place in Madurai city. She suspected that the documentary is being politicized for unknown reasons. She said that her intention was to only expose the social problem and never wanted to show any caste in poor light.

“About 40% of the calls are being made through internet which makes it impossible to trace the perpetrators. Although most of them introduced themselves as party men from Puthiya Thamilagam and other outfits of a particular community, when I checked many numbers belonged to BJP cadres,” she alleged.

Divya Bharathi said that she came to know that Puthiya Thamilagam leader K Krishnaswamy has allegedly threatened to take legal action against her. She appealed to him to ask his cadres not to disturb her in case they were behind the abusive phone calls and were spreading false information against her on social media.

General secretary of People’s Union for Civil Liberties R Murali and S Selvagomathi of SOCO Trust were present during in press meet.


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