Filmmaker-poet Leena Manimekalai said that she felt unsafe and declared that if anything untoward were to happen to her, filmmaker Susi Ganesan who she accused of sexual harrasment, is to be blamed.
In her tweet on Sunday, she wrote, “I am feeling very unsafe and if something untoward happens to me, I declare here in open that it will be his doing”.
The Twitter post came a few days after the Supreme Court rejected Ganesan’s appeal and refused to interfere with Madras High Court’s order to release Leena’s passport that was impounded in September over a pending defamation case filed against her by Ganesan. She had accused him of sexual harassment during the height of the #MeToo movement, in 2018.
She addressed the affairs so far and wrote, “My sexual harasser Susi Ganesan first threatened actor Siddharth supporting my #MeToo tweet, then both him and his wife threatened actor Amala Paul when she tweeted about his predatory behaviour. Then he filed a defamation case. And it followed with a gross misuse of criminal justice system to impound my passport”.
Silverscreen India reached out to her. While she was reluctant to speak considering concerns around her safety, she said over text, “Constitutionally, I can fight the court cases. And I am fighting from Magistrate to Sessions to High Court to Supreme Court. [But] what if something happens to me unconstitutionally?”
Leena added that she was feeling traumatised after she heard from her journalist friends that they were receiving threats.
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While Ganesan’s first petition to impound her passport was not entertained by the Saidapet Magistrate Court, he moved the court yet again. Leena’s passport was impounded early in September just as she was set to travel to Canada to pursue the last leg of her Master of Fine Arts course at York University.
In October, the Sessions and District Court of Chennai had set aside the Saidapet Magistrate Court’s order to impound Leena’s passport. However, Ganesan had appealed to quash this order of the Sessions Court.
In November, the Madras HC had observed that Leena’s passport could not be impounded on the mere basis of a criminal defamation case being pending against her. In early December, the High Court had quashed the passport impoundment and had directed the Regional Passport Officer to release Leena’s passport within one week of the court order’s receipt.