[This letter was written by Gayatri Devi, as the opening segment of the series of analyses that Althea hopes to collectively publish in the wake of the atrocious judgement passed by the Ernakulam Principal Sessions Court, written by the controversial judge Honey M Varghese, exonerating Dileep aka Gopalakrishnan in the actor assault case of 2017. The reflections on Dileep-supporters’ responses to it were written by J Devika.

In 2017, a leading female actor was kidnapped on her way back from work and raped by six men in a moving vehicle on the roads of the city of Kochi. The lead-rapist claimed to her that he was hired to do it. The alleged role of the actor Dileep in commissioning the horrifying act of violence, which was also filmed, has been at the centre of public outrage from 2017 to this day. Dileep’s role seemed to be strongly indicated by circumstantial evidence, however in the course of the trial, the advantages that he enjoyed seemed to surface repeatedly. The whole trial appeared to be an extended punishment of the survivor, and the culmination of it therefore was hardly unexpected. Nevertheless, the public, overwhelmingly with the survivor, has not taken the judgment lightly.

We believe that it is our feminist political responsibility to develop a critical discourse on on the normalization in Kerala of the insecure masculine that Dileep and his supporters represent, over the past three decades. The material we hope to examine includes the judgement itself as well as the many films that Dileep starred in, from the so-called ‘serious’ film he acted in directed by Adoor Gopalakrishnan, to his many slapstick comedies which became popular. The series is anchored by Gayatri Devi, and others will also contribute. This is the first in the series.]

Dearest Bhavana:

When I first heard the verdict in your 2017 case, in my mind, I silently thanked the fortuitousness of your name, “Bhavana.” Your name “Bhavana” means “imagination.” I thanked your name, because I believed that the strength to process the disillusionment and dissatisfaction that beset you upon hearing the wrong verdict was contained in your name. You must remember this fact. You must not forget this fact. You own a precious name. Your name embodies a precious truth.

The unfortunate fact is that the court that passed this wrong verdict seems to suffer from a great lack of imagination, among other shortcomings. To conclude as the court did that those six goons from somewhere, without any premeditation and conspiracy, laid in wait for you, then sexually assaulted you, and filmed themselves assaulting you boggles the mind of even somewhat alert children. We may rightfully infer that this ruling makes this court appear to be a court of justice in a merely titular sense. The chains that link the opulent mansions of Malayalam commercial cinema with shanty towns and skid rows are not unknown to our people.

What is justice? What is fairness? When justice is served in any crime, the opportunity to envision a more just future for the larger society is presented before the court. Sitting in judgement brings the court of justice closer to the dignity of human life; it helps process different perspectives, challenge existing unjust systems, and act as an instrument for progressive social change. Beyond seeing the litigating parties as mere numbers or categories, judges and lawyers use their “imagination” to understand their stories and their dignity as human beings. The exercise of Imagination is crucial to making justice a dynamic, hopeful, and human-centered process.

The court that ruled in your case appears to have exercised its judicial imagination on behalf of the perpetrators—both those who were punished and those who were not – and not on your behalf. This court appears to have given the perpetrators, and not you, the benefit of its empathy.

Moreover, the Accused no. 8 who celebrated his verdict of acquittal, even before a copy of the judgement was published, by distributing laddus to his fans and followers is a prime example of our society’s lack of imagination. It is indeed repulsive to see a defendant in a heinous crime celebrate his provisional acquittal in a trial court so loudly. What is there to celebrate here? Who in Kerala is not aware that you have not received justice in this case? Distributing laddus will not sweeten the taste of Malayalam commercial cinema.

So, dear sister, walk with your head held high. Take life into your own hands and walk forward. This is a temporary setback. Your moral strength, the power of its truth that propelled you to report the crime immediately after it took place will always stay with you. You must appeal to the High Court and the Supreme Court. The prosecution must appeal this wrongful verdict.

You may be familiar with the song “Eklo Chalo” – “Walk Alone” — by Mahakavi Rabindranath Tagore. We used to sing it in our childhood. But you are not alone, Bhavana. You do not know me, but I recite this song in my mind for you every day. There are many like me who are with you.  Bhavana, you will surely succeed.

With love and respect

Gayatri Devi, along with other sisters in Althea.

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Some of Dileep’s silent supporters have responded to the Malayalam version of the above letter with a smirk — because Gayatri points out that “[W]hen justice is served in any crime, the opportunity to envision a more just future for the larger society is presented before the court.” She had used the word ‘vibhaavanam’ for ‘envision’. It can also mean ‘imagine’. The use of these words seems to have triggered them, and this has exposed the manner in which they have been constantly justifying the verdict of acquittal by claiming that in court, ‘imagination’ is useless, all that counts is ‘evidence’ or ‘the facts.’

Those who take this line have been pitting ‘evidence’/’the facts’ against either ‘values/’value judgment’ or ‘opinions’. ‘Facts’ and ‘evidence’ stands up in court, not ‘values’, ‘value judgments’ or ‘opinions’ — they say. Some go further to mix up ‘values’ and ‘opinions’ — dangerously, because they are not the same. And if a fraction of the countless happenings that unfold each moment around the world are counted as ‘facts’ and recorded and preserved, they definitely do not emerge in a vacuum unsullied by values — quite the contrary. In science we have strong arguments that remind us of the epistemic values that shape what counts as scientific facts. Science rests on them, and not vice-versa.

Moving away from science towards the social sciences and humanities, including the discourse of the law, we also know that the distinctions between descriptive fact and evaluative prescriptions are not as strong as they may seem superficially. In the actor-assault case, what we have seem includes not merely the possible destruction and suppression of evidence, or ‘the facts’, (for example the backtracking of twenty-eight key witnesses, the tampering of forensic evidence, and so on), but also use of such ideas as ‘objectivity’, ‘value-free judgment’, and ‘factual’ as a shield by the accused. The survivor’s side is ’emotional’, ‘irrational’, ‘driven by politics’ etc. while the supporters of the accused rely on ‘facts’, ‘evidence’ and the cold reasoning of the law — they claim.

But we all know that in social science research or in the law, values appear in different parts of the process. In the beginning, when the research is plan, the legal question is pondered upon, values and the imagination play a huge role. At the end-point, how and where the research/reports/judgments are used are also driven by values. It is the middle part of the actual conduct of data collection/ conduct of investigation, and the application of analytical tools that we are expected to remain value-neutral. In this case, at the beginning, definitely, values were significant: after all, it is the anti-patriarchal values that our courts seemingly embraced through the sexual harassment at workplace/anti-sexual violence laws of the two decades of the present century that prompted the survivor to approach the court for justice in the first place. But it is evident that the value neutrality promised in the middle-stage was compromised in favour of an interpretation of it as offering plenty of leeway to the ferocious legal team hired by the defendant. So much so that the survivor made repeated pleas to move her trial away from Honey M Varghese’s court.

If the last resort of insecure men in the present is ‘objectivity’ or ‘the facts’ or ‘value-neutral judgment’, it was also the sheepskin used to allow the legal team of the accused to prolong the survivor’s agony through intense verbal harassment.

It is abundantly clear, too, that the judge did not exercise the kind of judicial imagination that deepens democracy and grants justice to the less-powerful, right at the beginning of the case. If she done so, she would have seen the multiple, distinct layers of violence suffered by the survivor, each of which deserve separate consideration while thinking of the gravity of the crime. For example, she does not see that this is not merely sexual assault, a bodily crime — it is also an assault against the mind, a mind-rape of sorts, in which the perpetrator demands, at the threat of violence, that the survivor create the impression that she was participating, having consensual sex. If the judge did not see it, that was not just because she is not familiar with the pre-given category of mind-rape — it is because she lacks the imagination of justice — bhavana, again — to fathom it. After all, imagination – bhavana — refers to the faculty of the human mind to grasp what is perhaps a real possibility in the world even if yet unavailable to our sense? But even if she went a lesser distance, even if she limited herself to exercising the imagination of justice enshrined in the Indian Constitution, she would have seen many more layer of violence in this crime. She would have seen that the chilling effect it creates is not on just one woman, but on all women who use employer-provided transport for work. This is, unlike, say, the Nirbhaya judgment, clearly a workplace-related crime. The terrible erosion of trust between colleagues, the irresponsibility of the employer, and many other aspects would have come to view.

Another way in which the insecure Malayali male brigade banishes the imagination is by pooh-poohing the significance of plausible reasoning. While we all know that it is used widely in legal, historical, and social scientific reasoning when certain circumstances and gaps in the legal, documentary/archival, and statistical reasoning demand it. In this case, the massive advantage enjoyed by the accused was already evident from the start, and plausible reasoning was indeed relevant in the interests of fairness towards the survivor. If it has been applied then the judgment would not have thought it impossible to move beyond the absurd story of six men getting into a car and kidnapping and raping a woman they hardly knew telling her that they were doing a paid-for crime. And definitely, plausible reasoning is no license for any thought-gibberish — we know that it has been recommended for even mathematical reasoning in acknowledgment of the relevance of the faculty of the imagination in mathematics (the works of George Polya, for example).

Bhavana remains central to our imagination of a more democratic and non-violent future — in more ways than you think, you bunch of losers.