Chennai: Radhika Sarathkumar, popular Tamil yesteryear actor and producer, has dropped a bombshell alleging that spy cams were fixed in caravans to capture female Malayalam actors changing clothes.
Radhika, known as the Ekta Kapoor of the South for her successful production of popular television serials, is also a member of the BJP and unsuccessfully contested from Virudhunagar in the last Lok Sabha polls. Her husband Sarathkumar is also a popular actor and he is also in the BJP.
Radhika Sarathkumar Speaks On One Of The Incident
“I was once working in a Malayalam film project. While I was passing, I saw a group of men watching something on their mobile phones and making some comments. I called a Tamil speaking member of the group and asked him what it was all about. I was shocked when he told me that they had videos of all female actors changing clothes inside the caravan,” Radhika told a Tamil television channel in an interview on Saturday.
“In my days, we would be required to change 18 sets of clothes during a (song) shoot. There were no caravans. We would just quickly change using clothes ties to four trees as curtains. Now they are fixing spy cams in caravans,” she said.
Radhika Sarathkumar Speaks On Sexual Harassment In The Tamil Film Industry
According to the yesteryear heroine, sexual harassment was widely prevalent in the Tamil film industry. “I know of popular politicians – I don’t prefer to name them at this stage...So many men would knock the doors of female actors and harass them. All those who are speaking otherwise, I know what happened to each of them. During shoots so many times my female co-stars would come to my room and says ‘madam I would like to stay with you to feel safe’,” she said.
Radhika also lamented the absence of mechanism to address these issues. “They are asking for proof. Can we woman always have a cell phone to capture the men misbehaving with us? Where is the mechanism to address this? What happened to Chinmayi (playback singer) who spoke out and has been consistently speaking out?,” she asked.
Chinmayi had complained about alleged sexual harassment from Tamil cinema’s leading lyricist Vairamuthu. She had also alleged that actor and BJP politician Radharavi, who heads the dubbing artistes union, had ensured no work came to her after she named him during the MeToo campaign. Radharavi is the half brother of Radhika.
