Complainant says celebration of man accused of public masturbation brought her support

Nandita Sankara is happy with the reception that the All Kerala Men’s Association has given Savad Sha, the man she had allegedly caught masturbating next to her on a bus in Kochi. In the nearly three weeks that he spent at the Aluva sub-jail on the basis of her complaint, Nandita had been subjected to a lot of cyber-attack, the way survivors and victims of sexual offences are. But this move by the men’s association, garlanding an accused sexual offender when he came out on bail, has reversed the reactions towards Nandita.

“The men’s association’s move was so disgusting that I began to get the kind of support that came in the initial days after the incident,” Nandita tells TNM. She had put out a video about it on May 17, narrating the episode and how she took a video of the man and called him out in public. In that video, she could be heard saying, “can you stop doing that” as he jumps off the seat and rushes out of the bus, and the bus conductor gives him a chase.

“I posted that video to show how important it was for women to react in such situations, to speak out. But it was twisted and turned into something else, people saying that I did it for fame and followers,” Nandita says. After the first two days of posting the video, during which she received much support, Nandita began receiving a lot of hatred online. She was harassed and bullied and her womanhood was questioned. She was judged for the clothes she wore. 

Read: Kerala public masturbation row: How do we address slut-shaming of women by other women?

“There were stories about how I got pregnant and then how I aborted it, without me coming to know of any of it. Another theory was that my act was a heavy elaborate honey trap,” she says.

All that began to change with the grand reception Savad got on getting out of jail on bail on June 3. He is still an accused, but the association members seem very sure of his innocence. “Their decision to welcome Savad back so grandly has made him a sort of meme. These are the people who consistently support sexual offenders. If a rapist comes out on bail, they would put a garland on him, but if they hear about a man who took part in the freedom fight, they wouldn’t care,” Nandita says.

Read: Kerala men’s group welcomes man accused of public masturbation with garlands