Truth  Lies  Beneath

 It was the day of Deepavali, festival of lights…

When others were busy in celebrating the sounds and lights of the festival, a girl named Mousumi Ari, of seventeen years of age, was being tortured in her in-laws house. She was murdered eventually.

Mousumi hailed from the family of a poor fisherman in Narayanpur village, Kakdwip, 24 Parganas, India and was married to a boy of her village, at the age of barely sixteen. Her father-in-laws, Swadesh Ari was a home guard in the local Kakdwip Police Station. After her marriage she fell prey to the wrath of her in-laws and was subjected to torture regularly. On the day of Deepavali, she was murdered by Swadesh Ari and his family members.

The administration not only remained mute. An unholy nexus of the police, hospital-morgue authority and legal administration tried to veil the culprits… to establish the murder as a case of suicide. They wiped out the trace of murder and twisted the events to suite their choice.

Apprehending the caucus of some vested interested, Sukumar Sahu, Laxmi Sahu, the parents of Mousumi and their relatives did not cremated the dead body of Mousumi but buried it under the earth in quest of justice.

The film depicts the victim’s voice, so far unheard and the experience of the rights activists stood by the side of the victim family…. narrating what happened actually and explores the eventually of Mousumi’s murder. It is an exposition of the Criminal Justice System in India.

The film is part of MASUM and AHRC’s on going campaign against torture. In protest against the all-pervasive torture in our society and the indifferent attitude of the administration towards the incidents of torture, MASUM and AHRC have jointly taken up the uphill task of continuing a sustained campaign against torture and also pointing out the loopholes in the Criminal Justice System in India.

Script & Direction : Gautam Sen

Photography : Sabyasachi Das

Editing : Tamal Chakrabarty

Produced by : MASUM (In), AHRC (Hk)

2005,DVD, PAL, 24 minutes

Selected Screenings

3rd National Shorts & Documentary Film Festival,Karimnagar

2nd Swaraj Filmotsav, Allahabad

2010 Radical Frame Film Festival, Berlin and Denver

Culture Unplugged Online Film Festival, 2009