Malayalam actor accuses co-star Shine Tom Chacko of misbehaving with her after ‘taking drugs’

Separately, CCTV footage from a Kochi hotel emerged that purportedly showed Chacko running out of the premises during a raid by an anti-narcotics squad of the city police on Wednesday.

The incident came just two months after a court in Kochi acquitted Chacko and others in a 2015 drugs case related to the seizure of cocaine during a rave party in a Kochi hotel. The court had found lapses on the part of the police in scientifically proving the case.

Regarding Wednesday’s incident allegedly involving Chacko, Kerala Excise Minister M B Rajesh said, “All complaints and revelations related to drugs will be probed seriously.”

The woman actor’s complaint of misbehaviour from a co-star comes months after there were a flurry of such complaints in the aftermath of the release of the Justice Hema Committee report on the issues faced by women in the Malayalam film industry.

Subsequently, the state government had formed the SIT to look into fresh allegations of sexual abuse.

The report, released in August last year, found that the problems faced by women in the Malayalam film industry include sexual harassment, lack of basic facilities like women’s toilets, gender bias and discrimination, disparity in remuneration, and the absence of a legally constituted authority to address their problems. The report was prepared by a three-member committee, headed by retired High Court judge Justice K Hema, which was formed in July 2017 in the wake of the sexual assault of a prominent actor in a moving vehicle in February that year.