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Photo:Vipin Chandran

Gender sensitive C A Pramod Babu felt the need to point out the danger to girl children

There is fire and fear in C. A. Pramod Babu’s eyes and then there is something else as well. His maiden documentary film ‘Krishnapriya Oru Ormakurrippu’ won the award for best T. V. documentary (south region) of the UNFPA – Laadli Media Awards for Gender Sensitivity. The Laadli media awards instituted by Mumbai based NGO Population First, which works on health, population and women’s issues, to acknowledge the positive portrayal of the girl child in advertising/television and print media.

‘Krishnapriya Oru Ormakkurippu’ is every parent’s worst nightmare come true; of things that haunt and ought to shame us as a society. The documentary tells the tale of 10-year-old Krishnapriya who was raped and killed by her father’s friend almost a decade ago. At the time the case made news not just for the heinousness of the crime but for the reason that Krishnapriya’s father killed her rapist who had got out from police custody. The magistrate court sentenced Krishnapriya’s father to life imprisonment, but he was acquitted by the High Court after human rights organisations and NGOs picked up his cause.

For this senior reporter with Surya TV, it was not the newsworthiness of the rape and murder that got his attention. “At the time it was an almost unheard of thing, today toddlers too aren’t safe. What happened haunted me for a long time,” says Pramod. This is the point where the two roles – of the journalist out on a story and of the father of two young girls meet. There is knowledge coupled with vulnerability, “I was deeply affected by what was happening, what had happened. When I was filming, I had a daughter; somehow that whole process changed me, made me even more afraid (for my daughter),” he says. The attempt at exorcising ghosts of the past, confronting fears – “is the only way to put them at rest” – has not brought forth any form of closure. That some fears are meant to be, is cold comfort.

So then, was making the documentary worthwhile? “I realise that things cannot be changed completely. Politics rule, the whims and fancies of the party in power is what matters. But what can be done is educate or spread awareness at the level of the family. Open their eyes to the dangers lurking around our children, particularly girl children,” says Pramod. His gender sensitivity is evident in the fact that of all the journalists, print and broadcast, who could have done some relevant reporting, he opted to.

“I cannot stand any kind of violence against women. I just have to react, it is ingrained in me,” he says. Pramod, a post graduate in English Literature did his graduation from Kerala Varma College, Thrissur and PG from University College, Thiruvananthapuram. He has been working for Surya TV for the last nine years before which he worked for ‘Mathrubhumi’.

That the whole process of filming Krishnapriya’s murder was anguishing is evident from the way Pramod narrates the train of events. “The family has not moved on from the point of time when Krishnapriya was murdered. Everything revolves around the one event that has changed their lives forever. The father has been unable to recover from the trauma of her death. When you look at his eyes what you see is a replay of events. The family and the father, in particular, is living through the memories of the daughter who is gone,” says Pramod. Life for them has come to a full stop.

Life goes on for Pramod, he plans to continue working on issue-based journalism, “the kind that will make a difference to the lives of people.”

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