The sexual assault of a 19-year-old female student in Pollachi, Coimbatore, has finally managed to (somewhat) grab the nation’s attention. The case has sent the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam—as well as the opposition Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam—into a tizzy of protests against each other. It’s caused Twitterati to demand justice for the #PollachiVictim, with rage burning against what could be the darkest extortion racket in recent times.

All this happened 30 days after the incident took place.

This fact itself should raise numerous questions: why didn’t political parties jump to the victim’s defence earlier, before the case picked up national mileage? Why did the media not deem the case important enough for prime-time coverage? Why and how was the victim’s identity revealed? And, most importantly, what exactly is the Pollachi sexual assault case?

The answers to these questions can be found in the margins that the media—both national and local—have left out in their reportage.

In order to understand what really happened, let’s start from February 12, 2019, the day of the incident.

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“This is probably the biggest case that I have handled,” said S Gopalakrishnan, an independent advocate practising in Coimbatore who is representing the 19-year-old victim, Pooja (name changed).

Speaking with Newslaundry over the phone, he says: “Sexual harassment has been faced by the victim on February 12, 2019, at about 1 pm. The victim and Sabarirajan knew each other through a common friend. On that day, Sabarirajan called the victim to a bus stop. When she reached there, Sabarirajan was in the car and he asked her to get in so that they could sit inside and talk about why had he called her there. Thirunavukkarasu, a friend of Sabarirajan’s, was in the driver’s seat, with Sabarirajan in the passenger seat next to him. All of a sudden, when the victim got into the car, two other people also got into the car without her knowledge and without her permission. Suddenly, the accused started driving the car towards Palladam Dharapuram, a road connecting the two towns of Palladam and Sharapuram. The victim started shouting when they started driving but the people in the car started harassing and molesting her. They tried to remove her clothes but she resisted. She’s a brave girl…”

Gopalakrishnan says the four men were unsuccessful in removing the victim’s clothes. Sabarirajan, Thirunavukkarasu, and the two other men who have now been identified as N Sathish and T Vasanthakumar also snatched Pooja’s chain and threatened her, saying that they had recorded a video of the entire incident. “They threatened the victim that she must pay them whenever they ask or else they would upload the video on social media. After the fight and resistance put up by the victim, she was offloaded from the car by the roadside. Two people who were coming towards Pollachi helped her; they put her in an auto and sent her to college. The victim went home after college that day but never relayed the matter to her family.”

Two days later, Pooja’s family discovered that her chain was missing. They also noticed that she was looking depressed. That’s when Pooja narrated the entire incident to her older brother and mother.

The family initially did not wish to lodge an official complaint because of the rigid societal norms that such situations draw from Indian society. However, Pooja’s brother managed to track down the two people who had helped her get an auto and contacted them. He, along with some friends, laid out a plan to catch Sabarirajan and Thirunavukkarasu, so as to warn them not to release the video.

Pooja’s brother and his friends posed as a customer over the phone, knowing that Sabarirajan and Thirunavukkarasu were involved in various second-hand car selling businesses. When Thirunavukkarasu and Sabarirajan reached the designated spot in Pollachi, there was a group of people waiting for them, including the victim’s brother’s friends and some others. They started beating them, asking what had happened that day, but Thirunavukkarasu and Sabarirajan said they hadn’t done anything. The duo was beaten up to the point of unconsciousness.

Thirunavukkarasu’s cell phone was taken and the media gallery revealed horrific videos. “They found four incriminating videos of three different girls on the phone,” says Gopalakrishnan.

The videos showed women who were being threatened and told to remove their clothes and indulge in sexual activity. Gopalakrishnan says there is nudity in the videos although the faces of the accused cannot be seen. One of the videos is 28 seconds long and shows a nervous woman shouting for help, saying, “Brother, don’t do anything.”

Some of Pooja’s brother’s friends took a backup of these videos on their phones since they were not ready to lodge a complaint that day—they simply wanted to warn the accused. “They wanted the videos as proof so that if they [accused] did anything in the future, they would then submit it to the police. The two accused who were beaten were then taken home by another co-accused.”

According to Gopalakrishnan,  after this episode, Thirunavukkarasu’s friends began threatening Pooja’s brother and his friends, who then approached an “influential business person who is also a family friend”. This “influential person” contacted Pollachi MLA and TN Deputy Speaker Pollachi Jayaraman to help Pooja get a case registered. Jayaraman also informed Coimbatore SP Pandiarajan that Pooja and her family would be coming to lodge a complaint.

Gopalakrishnan says: “In the meantime, the SP also informed local police to watch the movements of the accused. An official complaint was filed on February 24, 2019. Three of the accused were picked up from their homes itself, but the police at the time did not know that Thirunavukkarasu was in the hospital. Somehow word reached him (Thirunavukkarasu) that the police were looking for him and he believed that all of this was happening because of the influence of a certain MLA. He absconded and released an audio clip that said the accusations against him were ‘politically motivated’. What he meant is that the MLA is helping to file a complaint, therefore, the complaint is politically motivated. He tried to make it look like Pollachi Jayaraman himself is involved in the scandal—but this has been misinterpreted. Jayaraman was helping the victim file a complaint.”

A complaint was also filed against Thirunavukkarasu’s four friends who were not involved in the main harassment case but who threatened Pooja’s brother after he lodged a complaint. Three of them were granted bail on March 5, 2019. One of them was Nagaraj, an AIADMK youth who, according to The News Minute, “was also detained by the police for attacking the victim’s brother”. He was granted bail by a judicial magistrate in a local court on the grounds that the original complainant—Pooja—had mentioned only four names in her sexual harassment complaint of which Nagaraj wasn’t a part.

“Everything was fine till here,” said Gopalakrishnan. “But on March 10, 2019, a Tamil magazine Ananda Vikatan published an online story stating that the main accused in the sexual harassment case had been granted bail—but no, they were in remand! It was a wrong story stating that the main accused had been granted bail on the same day as the arrest. But in fact, it was only the accused in the threatening case who were granted bail. The magazine ran the story blindly and never mentioned specifically who the accused were. People didn’t know that there were two FIRs: one for the sexual harassment case and the other for threatening. That’s when the outrage on social media began. #Pollachi started trending on Twitter and people were demanding for the accused(s) to be arrested, not knowing that they [accused in sexual harassment case] were in remand at the time, and are so till now.”

On March 11, a Tamil news magazine called Nakkheeran released a video of the Pollachi sexual assault case in which the girls’ face had been morphed. “This is not the victim [Pooja] in the video, but Nakkheeran hasn’t clarified this in their story,” says Gopalakrishnan. “They simply stated that this was a Pollachi sex scandal video. They did not even clarify that this victim is a different girl. Till now, there has been no video of the victim [Pooja] that has been found or that has been released. The video that was shot in the car was not found on the accused(s) phones when they were trapped by the victim’s brother and his friends.”

He also points out that Nakkheeran claimed there were about 275 girls and 1,100 videos involved in this racket, but none of this has been confirmed. “We are waiting on the outcome of the investigation.”

“On March 12, 2019, we came forward to the press because we were not able to stop the rumours. Personally, I feel bad about it. What we were expecting from the media is that instead of eye-catching titles, they must work on the story in-depth. But no one has met or spoken to the victim or her brother. They (press) are simply doing desk work. No one cares about the facts.”

On the same day, Gopalakrishnan, along with the victim’s brother and family friend who had initiated the complaint, also petitioned the collector stating they did not want Pooja’s identity to be revealed, nor did they want her name amid political accusations. “She also clarified that the ruling party MLA [Jayaraman] had helped her file a complaint and requested that she and her family’s name is not dragged into this political spat.” Pooja and her brother also released an audio and video clip respectively to clarify the issue regarding political connection in this case.

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But the media wasn’t the only one treating the case with insensitivity. The Tamil Nadu government failed miserably in protecting the victim’s identity and revealed it on three different occasions. On March 1, Coimbatore SP Pandiarajan revealed the name of the victim in a press conference. On March 6, the police released a statement with the details of the victim, CNN reported. On March 15, a government order transferring the case to the CBI revealed Pooja’s name and the college she studies in.

The Madurai bench of the Madras High Court came down heavily on the Tamil Nadu government and ordered it to pay ₹25 lakh as compensation to the victim. The court further directed the government to take disciplinary action against SP Pandiarajan for disclosing the identity of the victim and the number of accused and videos in the case during the preliminary stage of the investigation. Lastly, it asked the government to withdraw the old order that transferred the case to the CBI and release a fresh one in which the identity of the victim was not revealed.

But the damage had already been done.

Meanwhile, on March 13, Justices Kirubakaran and SS Sundar of the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court, while hearing a case related to the handling of relief material to those affected by Cyclone Gaja, compared the Pollachi sex scandal case to the 2012 Nirbhaya case. It also slammed the mainstream media over their “lack of priority” for not covering the Pollachi case as they did with Nirbhaya.

On March 18, Nakkheeran’s editor R Gopal moved the Madras High Court, seeking anticipatory bail in connection with the Pollachi sexual abuse case videos that were allegedly released. He submitted that the cyber crime wing, acting on a complaint from Deputy Speaker Pollachi Jayaraman, had registered cases against him under Sections 153, 153 (A), 505, 469 of the Indian Penal Code and Section 66 of the Information Technology Act. He alleged that “foisting” such a case against him was a blatant misuse of power. “The mala fide intention of the complainant is to scare any other media from publishing any evidence in connection with the Pollachi sexual abuse case,” said Gopal.

On March 19, the Tamil Nadu government informed the Madras High Court that it had already passed orders to transfer the two main cases in connection with the Pollachi sexual assault case to the CBI and that a decision had been taken to transfer other related cases as well to the central agency. Justice N Anand Venkatesh recorded the submission made by State Public Prosecutor (SPP) A Natarajan and also disposed of the advance bail petition filed by Gopal with “liberty to the petitioner to approach the court once again if there was any apprehension of his arrest after all cases get transferred to CBI.”

The judge also disapproved of Nakkheeran magazine’s uploading videos related to the case on social media, and felt that it would not be advisable for multiple agencies such as the CBI, the CCB and the CB-CID to conduct independent investigations.

Megha Kaveri, a reporter with The News Minute, says that the story was first reported in the media on February 26. “At the time, it seemed like a one-off incident, but by the second week of March, everyone was talking about #ArrestPollachiRapist,” she says. “All of this backtracks to two articles on Ananda Vikatan and Nakkheeran. Both are investigative platforms and the access and reach that these two magazines have is much more than what English publications have [in the South]. These two stories were shared widely. But Nakkheeran didn’t specify that the video they have used in their story was not of the survivor who had filed the complaint. Neither did they mute the audio. Ananda Vikatan mentioned two different cases but the way it was written it was being interpreted by people as the accused who had been let out on bail were the main accused in the sexual assault case. All of this affected the emotion of the people and they started talking about the case from March 10 onwards.”

According to Kaveri, the problem arose when Nakkheeran alleged that the video used in their story was a “drop in the ocean” and that there were more than 100 videos that the four accused had taken of more than 200 women. “As far as the sources I’ve spoken with, these numbers haven’t been substantiated. The cops haven’t substantiated them yet, nor has the lawyer of the victim. So nobody has any basis for where these numbers are coming from. Ananda Vikatan in their story had alleged the involvement of an AIADMK political leader. In one subhead, they linked a past instance where the member’s son was involved in an accident in which a woman died—they were linking that [an unrelated case] to the Pollachi case. At the time Nagaraj—the AIADMK youth who threatened the victim’s brother—was arrested, the main accused in the sexual assault case who were absconding for nearly 10 days released a video to the magistrate, cops, lawyers, and the leader of Opposition MK Stalin, and said that there was a lot of political background to the case. If he is going to ask Stalin to help him, it would mean AIADMK guys were being insinuated in the case.”

Thus began the politicisation of the issue.

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When asked whether the local press in Tamil Nadu had dropped the ball, Kaveri said: “Yes, I think so. Initially, there are certain guidelines that we need to follow keeping in the mind the mental state of the people affected by this racket. Even if this racket is a big network of 10-20 guys who are doing this on a regular basis, the media should have made people know about the case in a more sensitive fashion. From a sensational background point-of-view, the audio [in the video released by Nakkheeran] will make me very angry, but at the end of the day, what about the trauma that the complainant or the victim in the video will go through when they see it? Where did Nakkheeran get these videos from? Is it ethical at all? I have spoken to my sources who say that the complainant’s brother and his friends had thrashed the four accused and had taken a backup of the videos from their cellphones. It is the brother’s friends who have given the videos to Nakkheeran. Shouldn’t Nakkheeran have asked them the question that first, you thrash the accused but then you take a backup and leak it to the press? I feel the victim’s brother and his friends are also equally guilty of sensationalising the case. They should also be punished for this—even if their intention was good.”

Kaveri says the Tamil Nadu authorities have not done a good job of safeguarding the victim’s identity. “As law-keepers of the land, they are supposed to be perfect in whatever they are doing—especially in cases of sexual assault. Pollachi isn’t a metropolitan city where these things may be taken in a victim-friendly fashion. It is a small town which has its own set of superstitions and stigma.”

With reference to SP Pandiarajan revealing the name of the victim, followed by the GO that disclosed further identity details, Kaveri said that as a layman, one who would think that they (authorities) did this to intimidate the victim. “That is the sign that comes out of it. Two other victims were not ready to file a complaint from what I know because they were scared of the handling. As for the ₹25 lakh compensation for the victim, no one knows when will the money be given to her. Meanwhile, protests rage on. There are 2-3 protests every day but I sincerely wish that people don’t politicise this for their own benefit. It is easy for parties to gain mileage but I feel the victim’s state of mind should be considered. Let the case be probed in a fair manner. The role of political parties is done by bringing the news to the mainstream and having people talk about it—now let the authorities take over.”

Ramya Kannan, a senior reporter with The Hindu, says it all started with Nakkheeran releasing a video in which the girl’s face was morphed—but the audio was left on. “The original case of sexual assault is much older and was filed in early February; at the time, there was no action taken and then there was the intervention of a politician after which some arrests were made. It was only last Monday that this morphed video was released online and then the whole issue jumped into prominence.”

According to her, there were quite a few transgressions in terms of media ethics. “They (media houses) used the name of the victim and other identification details. They sort of very clearly capitalised and sensationalised the opportunity. It didn’t help that the SP himself revealed the name of the girl and so did a subsequent government order. But news organisations did not exercise the amount of caution that was required while reporting on such cases that have a nature of sexual assault or rape. A large part of the media’s role was self-regulation, and in that sense, media houses have failed quite badly.”

Kannan says it is important to understand the nature of journalism in Tamil Nadu itself. “The state has a tradition of sensational journalism in its regional press, by and large. To truly understand this, one needs to understand how the Tamil media reports. I’m talking about Tamil media as a general unit certainly there are some magazines and newspapers who sensationalise more than others. At the same time, there are also exceptions to this rule. The thing is: this is not a single case, even though in the public’s imagination it might have become one. This is a series of assaults of illegal videotaping and a series of recordings over a period of 6-7 years. Many women have been affected. There have been victims of abuse and of blackmail and the case is far more complex than it seems like now. There are multiple elements to it.

“I think the media has reported the case in an attempt to make hay by the sunshine but they have only muddied the issue further and made it less clear. I doubt there are significant members of the public who totally understand what the Pollachi sexual assault case is actually about. There are so many anonymous and source based stories but they add no clarity to the narrative. The story is an evolving one. It is important for the media to exercise great caution and not repeat its mistakes again.”

According to Induja Ragunathan, deputy editor of YourStory Tamil, the biggest flaw of the media was to think that by putting out such sensational videos of the case, they would be putting pressure on the police to take action. “The editor of Nakkheeran specifically said that if it wasn’t for their publication having put out the video, the case would not have been able to gather the momentum it was lacking before,” says Ragunathan. “They [media houses] are trying to justify their actions by taking such a stand. We too are a part of the media, but we believe that this [pressure] can be created without violating the privacy of the victim.  News organisations have not been successful in getting the actual news out and have done more harm than good in this case. Initially, some media houses didn’t carry the video. They only published the audio. But in a time of competition, when one media house puts out the video, others are also forced to do the same. Some media house didn’t even blur the video properly.

“Media houses, even though they had proof of the video, could have used some sort of technology to recreate the incident and publish it in a  different form so that the victim isn’t identified. Even when the pictures of the accused(s) were put out, the women in their families started being harassed and trolled. This is what news organisations and media houses don’t understand, that when they start putting out more pictures and videos of personal things, it creates even more confusion and chaos and deviates from the main case.”

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“As of now, the victim is very strong and bold,” said Gopalakrishnan. “She is in a safe place with a relative. Her brother is attending his work every day after undergoing counselling. But they are afraid of the reporters in Tamil Nadu. Everyone is knocking on their doors ever since they petitioned the collector. But I do want to thank the media at large for not disclosing her name.”

“The victim has come forward to file the complaint notably for her sake but also for the sake of other girls as well. The only request she has is that if you have been exploited by these men, then please come forward and lodge a complaint. We feel sad that even after the case was transferred to the CB-CID, there has been no communication from the police to us about whether there are any new complaints against all four accused who have been remanded in custody. There are three dedicated hotline numbers only for this cause. Local newspapers say there are hundreds of victims but there has been no official statement from the police,” he added.