By 2018, things were finally looking up for Arya Menon.

Originally from Kerala, Arya had spent nearly a decade carving out space for herself in the Hindi film industry. She had acted in a few roles, including alongside Shah Rukh Khan in Chak De! India, experimented with costume design, and eventually turned to production. In 2016, she produced Famous in Ahmedabad, which won the National Award. By the summer of 2018, Arya had worked as a producer on the Netflix series Sacred Games, a show that redefined Indian streaming television in many ways. 

After years of navigating a precarious industry, her career finally seemed to be stabilising.

But then, towards the end of the year, the ground beneath the entire industry shifted.

On the evening of October 11, 2018, a journalist posted a tweet titled: “Sajid Khan has preyed on women in the industry for years. Here’s my story. #MeToo.” 

The post was part of the #MeToo movement — a global reckoning that saw women break years of silence to call out  sexual harassment and abuse enabled by powerful men in their workplaces.

Arya knew Sajid Khan. She had interned in the same office where he used to work.

Arya was very aware of Sajid’s behaviour and the kind of damage he could do to a young woman’s confidence.  

The journalist’s tweet detailed how, in the early 2000s, when she was a young reporter, she........

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