Madurai Police Thursday booked 25-year-old documentary filmmaker Divya Bharathi on a complaint by Dalit party Puthiya Thamazhigam alleging that her latest work Kakkoos (Toilet) shows Pallar, a Scheduled Caste, in bad light. This comes almost a week after Bharathi filed a police complaint after receiving nearly 1,000 threat calls. Bharathi has been booked under IPC Sections 153 (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race etc), and 505 (promoting hatred among communities, classes). Police sources said Puthiya Thamizhagam had objected to the mention of the Pallar caste in the film that is on manual scavengers in Tamil Nadu and alleged that she has links with Left extremist groups. The controversy over the film started last week. Bharathi said it was not the film, but her intervention in the cause of a group of conservancy workers that prompted the protest. The conservancy workers, she said, were allegedly harassed and engaged in scavenging by an official of Anna University in Dindigul. The official is from the Pallar community and close to Puthiya Thamizhagam leader K Krishnasamy, she said.
