An actress who worked on Kanchana 3, the horror comedy franchise directed by Raghava Lawrence, has filed a sexual harassment complaint against a photographer. The MRC Nagar police, after conducting an investigation, arrested the perpetrator yesterday, reports IBTimes.
Apart from Oviya, Vedhika and Nikki Tamboli, Kanchana 3 featured Ri Djavi Alexandra, a Russian actress who played the role of Rosie in the movie. Her character appears opposite Raghava Lawrence in the flashback portion of the movie.
Ri Djavi, who stays in MRC Nagar with her husband and children, takes on acting and modelling assignments. She complained that photographer Roopesh Kumar, under the pretext of getting her acting chances, made her pose for a photo shoot and demanded sexual favours. He threatened her that if she did not comply, he would morph the images and post them online.
Based on her complaint, the police collected evidence against him and arrested him yesterday.
Written and directed by Raghava Lawrence, Kanchana 3 also stars Kovai Sarala, Sriman and Devadarshini, who have come to be closely associated with the franchise.
Sathyaraj, Soori, Kabir Duhan Singh, Manobala and Yogi Babu are the other actors in the film. The movie, which released last week, has gone on to become a huge summer success.
Ri Djavi’s is the second incident of sexual harassment to have been reported in recent times. On Monday, Malayalam actress and Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) member, Sajitha Madathil narrated her experience of being solicited for the casting couch.
Taking to Facebook to detail her experience, she wrote, “One Karthik form Tamil Nadu contacted me identifying himself as an assistant director working on a Tamil movie.”
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He apparently asked the actress if she would be interested in the project. When Sajitha asked him to mail her the details of the project, he asked her: “You would be okay for adjustments and compromises, right?”
Sajitha Madathil went ahead and shared the contact of the caller, asking “everyone who was okay” to call him.
The actress said that she is yet to decide the future course of action on the issue. However, she revealed that Karthik reached out to her through someone and told her that he was prepared to apologise. When she asked the reason for his wanting to apologise, there was no response.