Shalini (name changed), 25, was sitting in the balcony of her first floor apartment in Kerala’s Kozhikode on the night of February 1 this year when three men — her employer and his two accomplices — snuck into the house. She was playing an interactive multiplayer game on her mobile phone with a friend in Dubai, when the intruders reached her. The voice chat was on, and her friend could hear Shalini’s sudden screams, along with the voice of a man who said in Malayalam, “It’s me, it’s uncle. Don’t be scared. I came to talk to you. Don’t yell, that will only bring shame to you.” 

This wasn’t the first time that her employer Devadasan had behaved inappropriately with her. Just a few weeks after she joined Hotel Sanketam as a front office manager, he started sending her sexually coloured messages, Shalini says. But she never thought he’d be brazen enough to enter her home and try to assault her.

The young woman jumped off the balcony in an attempt to escape the sexual violence and was unable to move once she hit the ground. Her assaulters then took her to a hospital around 11 pm, where Shalini informed a doctor about what had happened. By the time the police arrived on receiving information from the hospital, the accused had absconded.

Devadasan and his accomplices Riyas and Suresh were caught four days later, and thanks to the fact that Shalini was recording her gameplay, she has evidence against them. While she was struggling to get away from the men, the camera app on her phone came on and the screen recorder captured everything the camera saw for the next few seconds.

This incident has put the spotlight on the unsafe working conditions experienced by women in the hospitality industry, a rapidly growing sector owing to Kerala’s emphasis on tourism. TNM spoke to Shalini and other survivors. Overnight stay at the workplace, unregulated work hours, a skewed gender ratio at higher managerial levels, and a lack of adherence to the law against workplace sexual harassment are cited as some of the reasons that put women in an unsafe situation.

Days after the rape attempt, Shalini is still on bed rest with spinal injuries she suffered while trying to escape by jumping off the building. She can’t get up or even sit. Four days after the incident, the police arrested all three accused – Devadasan, the owner of Hotel Sanketam in Mampetta in Kozhikode district; his staffer Riyas; and his personal assistant Suresh.

Shalini is the only earning member of her family, comprising her husband and her parents; so when she received the job offer from the newly opened Hotel Sanketam, 90 km away from her home, she considered it a blessing. She has a diploma in hotel management and has worked at various hotels for two years, and the monthly salary of Rs 30,000 she was offered at Sanketam was the highest in her career.

Devadasan’s harassment began in the form of obscene WhatsApp messages a few weeks after she joined work in December 2024. From purely work-related topics, the tone of the messages occasionally slipped into indecent comments on her body. Shalini reacted sharply to such messages and threatened to resign, as per screenshots she shared with TNM. However, he pacified her by promising to maintain a professional relationship. “I couldn’t immediately leave the job as I owed him money received as advance payment. I had no one to complain to, as he was the only reporting manager and the remaining staff were all junior women,” Shalini says.

All six women staffers were given accommodation in a two-storeyed house that was a stone’s throw away from the hotel. On February 1, the day of the attempted assault, Shalini was alone at the house as her colleagues were travelling.

Shalini’s relatives tell TNM that they believe Devadasan was arrested only because of the video evidence she had inadvertently collected. “He has strong political connections and money power. But as they say, every criminal leaves a trace,” says Shalini’s uncle. Shalini says Devadasan had been roaming freely for two days after the incident and tried to defame her until the video surfaced. “My friend had sent the video of the game which had captured my screams. That is when I checked the screen recorder in my phone,” she says.

Mukkam police say that the FIR was registered under sections 74 (use of criminal force to outrage modesty of women), 62 of 64 (1) (attempt to rape), 332 (c) house-trespass, 78 (stalking), and 3(5) (crime with a common intention) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. All the accused have been remanded to judicial custody.

While an accidentally captured video came to Shalini’s aid, Roshini (name changed) had a hard time collecting evidence of harassment from a hostile workplace before she was forcefully terminated in May 2023.

Roshini, 35, was an employee at the Munnar branch of a Goa-based resort. From the time she joined the firm as a front office manager in February 2022, she says she has been facing various forms of workplace harassment, including late night messages seeking sexual favours, from her colleagues. The last straw came when she was subjected to verbal abuse and sexually coloured remarks by a guest in front of her colleagues. Instead of supporting her, the company terminated her, accusing her of ‘unprofessional behaviour’ for resisting the insults.

In an industry with a thick glass ceiling, Roshini was one of the few women to climb the ladder and secure the position of a general manager at the resort. When she first joined, she had to face persistent mental harassment from the then general manager and sales manager, she says, with the latter sending her inappropriate messages and making late night calls seeking sexual favours. In the absence of an internal committee against sexual harassment, Roshini decided to send a complaint to the higher ups for mental harassment by the two men. She, however, did not mention the issue of sexual harassment. Instead of taking action, the company responded with a ‘warning’ letter. “They accused me of disobedience and said that I was not cooperating with the operations. By cooperation, they meant sexual favours,” Roshini tells TNM. 

According to the Sexual Harassment of Women at the Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 (henceforth, POSH Act), it is the legal responsibility of every employer to ensure that the workplace is free of sexual harassment for all women. Further, every organisation with 10 or more employees must have an internal committee (IC) that ensures that the workplace is safe and addresses complaints of sexual harassment at the workplace. Roshini’s workplace — like many others in Kerala’s hospitality industry — did not have an IC. 

So when the reprimand came for her complaint against her colleagues, she decided to drop it. She was planning to find work abroad and didn’t want to spend her energy fighting the company.

But four months after her complaint, she ended up receiving a promotion. The then general manager — one of the men who allegedly harassed Shalini — was fired by the company for fraudulent activities, Roshini tells TNM. And Roshini was given the job of GM in January 2023.

“But even after the promotion, the toxic and abusive work environment continued from a sales manager, and from a cluster manager named Srijith Mani,” she says.

Four months after her promotion, Roshini found herself forcefully terminated from her job. This happened after a client — Sreekant Venkitaraman — verbally abused her at the resort. The company not only ignored her complaints of inappropriate behaviour by the guest, but terminated her for seeking an apology for it.

Even after the forceful termination, the company continued to harass by defaming her in a reference email to her new employer, Roshini alleges, which led to the new company firing her. Following this, Roshini filed a case at the Vellathooval police station in Idukki in September 2024.

On January 7, 2025, Roshini sent a legal notice to the company and the guest who harassed her, for unlawful termination, harassment, defamation, and loss of employment opportunities. In the notice, Roshini demanded that the company either assist her and ensure that she obtains a valid job within 15 days or pay her a compensation of Rs 50 lakh. She said in the legal notice that she faced repeated and unwarranted late night calls and intimidation from the cluster manager Srijith. “This behaviour, in conjunction with the actions of the Sales Manager, who engaged in inappropriate and discriminatory conduct, created a toxic and hostile work environment,” she alleged in the legal notice.

In a reply sent on January 30, the hotel denied all the allegations against its employees and guest. It said that it would contest any legal proceedings initiated on “frivolous claims.”

On January 15, a chargesheet was filed at the Judicial First Class Magistrate Court in Angamaly against Sreekant and Srijith under under Indian Penal Code sections 294(b) (uttering obscene words), 354A (sexually coloured remarks), 509 (insults modesty of woman), and 34 (criminal act committed by several persons).

Roshini tells TNM that she decided to pursue the case after the company continued to harass her by defaming and ruining her career. 

She worked briefly at an airport lounge. There, Roshini says, she witnessed a manager making sexually suggestive remarks towards his junior colleagues. “There was no IC there either. When one woman dared to raise the issue with the Human Resources department, she was given warning on how it would affect her career prospects or even family life,” Roshini says.

Veena (name changed), a Human Resources professional at a reputed Thrissur-based resort, says that she was met with shocking body shaming comments soon after she joined the firm. “A senior manager made jokes about my skin tone. He also repeatedly mentioned that I am overweight. One day, I went to purchase uniform material for the staff. Over the phone, I was discussing the quantity of cloth needed for a blouse, when he remarked that I would need more than that,” Veena says.

Last week, she filed a complaint after the manager started making late night calls to her, asking her to visit his room. “During work hours, he would waste my time by inviting me to his cabin for unnecessary discussions. When I raised an objection to his night calls, he apologised stating that he was intoxicated and was not in his senses that night. However, his approach changed immediately after this. He started calling me incompetent and unprofessional,” Veena says. Such behaviour, where a harasser creates a hostile work environment for a person who has rejected a sexual or romantic proposal, is globally recognised as a form of sexual harassment.

Just after the release of the Justice Hema Committee report, which exposed the unsafe working conditions of women in the Malayalam film industry, several women professionals, including actors and makeup artists, opened up about the harassment they faced on sets. Some of them revealed how unsafe they felt at the accommodation provided during shooting. The women in the hospitality industry say that their situation is very similar.