The abduction and sexual assault of an actor in Kochi on Friday last could be the result of a larger conspiracy involving persons with stakes in the movie industry, according to top police investigators.
On Sunday, the police investigation appeared centred around the calls received by the prime suspect on his mobile phone as the crime unfolded.
The suspect calls were from a Chennai-based number. They have been traced to a person who has interests in film production but was no public figure, actor or director, a top investigator said.
The fiendish attack and its fallout has painted a dark picture of the safety of women in public. The fear and revulsion it has spawned in society remained palpable.
Investigators said the assault on the actor was not an opportunistic sex crime on board a commuter train or a public transport bus. It did not indicate a crime wave or a breakdown of law and order.
Instead the occurrence was a “one-off” felony orchestrated to blackmail, shame and possibly disrupt an ongoing movie production.
The assailants had carefully planned a trap to waylay the celebrity. It was an inside job executed with the help of a staff, a history-sheeter, callously employed by the production company to chauffeur actors around at all hours.
The suspects seemed more intent on photographing their victim “unclothed” than sexually assaulting her. Their actions could be legally construed as rape. The actor powerfully resisted the “45-minute siege of terror” and counter-attacked her abductors. It was unclear whether she could dial any emergency numbers. It also remained a secret whether the police received any digital evidence of the actor’s ordeal.
The police are also viewing the crime as an issue of workplace safety. Most women actors, like their male counterparts, did fieldwork in unfamiliar locations and at unpredictable hours. It made them vulnerable to sexual offences and their workplace safety seemed to be of scarce importance to their employers, officials said.
Investigators were also focussed on the past of the assailants. They said they could not rule out the possibility that assailants could have executed similar blackmail bids earlier.
