On 25 July, 2026, the resignation of former education minister Dharmendra Pradhan brought a moment of triumph for thousands of protesters agitating against paper leaks in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), an examination for those looking to pursue undergraduate degrees in medicine. But for many, this day also signalled the beginning of unexpected turmoil.
During the demonstrations, as anger mounted over the state’s repressive response, many protestors became increasingly vocal—and sometimes abusive—in their criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. When the protests ended, online mobs singled out several young women, including a 15-year-old girl. These women were doxxed, threatened, and forced to apologise for their remarks. Now, a similar campaign is being waged against Jaanmoni Das, a Keralam-based trans woman and celebrity makeup artist.
The controversy involving Jaanmoni centres around a video clip in which she is seen making disparaging remarks about Modi. According to Jaanmoni, her words were misconstrued, edited out of context, and broadcast without her consent.
In late July, Jaanmoni travelled to Delhi and Mumbai with her friend Ranjini Haridas—a television anchor and actor. They both joined the protests led by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) and student organisations. Days later, as news of Pradhan’s resignation spread, reporters from about four or five media houses reached Jaanmoni’s house in Kochi seeking her reaction, she recalled to queerbeat in a phone interview.
Mollywood Connect, a regional entertainment platform, uploaded a video clip from this interaction. In it, Jaanmoni appeared to mock Modi by calling him a chaiwallah, or a tea-seller, and questioning his lineage. She also spoke at length about the struggles of protesting students across the country and expressed her support for them.
The video quickly went viral. The backlash was swift too. “I got over 200 calls and messages in one day. People on the other end said things like they would throw acid on my face, they would kill me, and that they would come to my house and burn it down,” Jaanmoni told queerbeat.
The abuse was steeped in transphobia. Jaanmoni’s social media pages, as well as those of accounts that posted the video clip, were flooded with slurs and threats of violence.
(Although Mollywood Connect has since deleted this clip from its social media accounts, snippets continue to circulate online.)
As matters escalated, Jaanmoni uploaded an apology video on Instagram on 26 July. In this video, she said that since she wasn’t fluent in Malayalam, her words and tone could have conveyed a very different intention from what she meant. (Jaanmoni is from Assam but currently works and resides in Keralam.) “These words shouldn’t have come from my mouth,” she told queerbeat about the remarks. Meta took the original video down for “violating community guidelines” after it was reported by Instagram users, said Jaanmoni. “I even sent a formal apology letter to the Prime Minister over email,” she told queerbeat.
However, Jaanmoni added, the video clip also lacked crucial context. “What I said about the PM’s lineage and about him being a chaiwallah were not comments I made on my own,” she said. Rather, she explained, she was translating Hindi memes and reels that had gained popularity during the protests into Malayalam for the reporters around her. She had also taken this position in the apology video. “I watched some content from Delhi and translated the contents of the video. Maybe because my Malayalam isn’t good enough, I said it problematically,” she said.
Jaanmoni also said that she repeatedly told the journalists present at the interaction not to broadcast any video clips from these statements since they were part of “informal conversations and not formal media interviews.” She recalled cautioning the media representatives that doing so could cause trouble for both her and the channels.
A person present during this interaction recalled to queerbeat that Jaanmoni had been “explaining something that happened in her region,” and that Mollywood Connect “carelessly” used these statements in the video it posted. This person requested anonymity to protect their identity. According to them, Jaanmoni hadn’t asked for any specific portions to be cut, but had requested all the media persons present to edit out any “mistakes or incorrect statements.”
(queerbeat sent queries to the cameraperson from Mollywood Connect present at the interaction as well as to the Instagram page of the platform. This copy will be updated if they respond.)
On 27 July, a day after Jaanmoni uploaded the apology, the controversy took a legal turn. Navya Haridas—a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) councillor from Kozhikode and the general secretary of the party’s Mahila Morcha, or women’s wing—filed a complaint against Jaanmoni with the Cyber Crime Police Station at Kozhikode. The police registered a first information report (FIR), invoking provisions relating to provocation to cause a riot; defamation; and causing nuisance through any means of communication. According to the FIR, Jaanmoni acted “with the intention and deliberate purpose of creating a disruption in society and disturbing public peace…”
Other members from the Mahila Morcha filed similar complaints at about 200 police stations across all of Keralam’s 14 districts, Navya told queerbeat. They did so because “Jaanmoni insulted the Prime Minister of this country, his dead mother, and questioned his parentage,” Navya said. “While filing the case, we told the police as well that this is not just about Jaanmoni. We told them that we want stringent action and for this case to be an example so that this is not repeated in the future,” she added. (queerbeat couldn’t independently verify whether or not 200 complaints were filed against Jaanmoni.)
On 20 August, a little over three weeks after the complaints against Jaanmoni were filed, Kozhikode cyber crime officials arrested Jaanmoni. She was released on station bail a few hours later. “We see Jaanmoni’s arrest as a proud validation for the Mahila Morcha,” said Navya. “When this issue spread a wrong message on social media, Mahila Morcha members were prompt with their action and their response, which is what led to her [Jaanmoni’s] arrest.”
Police officials also arrested the cameraperson present during the interaction with Jaanmoni, as well as the owner of Mollywood Connect. Like Jaanmoni, they were given station bail after the arrest. Officials also “seized the mobile phone” used by the cameraperson “for further examination,” according to one report. The police had identified Jaanmoni, the cameraperson, and Mollywood Connect’s owner as “the three accused in this case,” said an official who responded to the official landline number listed for the Kozhikode Cyber Crime Police Station. The official said that the police had seized the cameraperson’s phone “for evidence” because they needed to check “communication” from the device and verify whether the video was shot using it. “Once the investigation is complete, we will submit the investigation report to the court,” the official added.
Among those who condemned Jaanmoni was Congress member Arunima Kurup—the state general secretary of the Kerala Students Union and the first president of the Kerala Pradesh Transgender Congress. Arunima emphasised that she did not support either the BJP or Modi. She respected Jaanmoni’s decision to attend the protests and engage with students, but opposed her comments. “I am a Congress representative, but I don’t think what she did was right,” Arunima told queerbeat. “When one criticises a person’s family, they will not get any support from Congress or Congress’s Transgender Cell. This was very bad behaviour from Jaanmoni’s side, and the community will never support that.”
When queerbeat asked Arunima about the vitriol directed at Jaanmoni, Arunima didn’t respond to the question directly. Instead, she said that she had herself faced such harassment when she criticised Pinarayi Vijayan, the former Chief Minister of Keralam and Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader.
Ranjini was in close contact with Jaanmoni through this episode and had even recorded the apology video. Her immediate response to the controversy, she recalled, was that Jaanmoni “shouldn’t have said stuff like that.” However, she also wondered whether the Mahila Morcha was targeting Jaanmoni because she had expressed strident support for the protests.
This kind of state harassment wasn’t restricted to Jaanmoni alone, pointed out Sheethal Shyam, a transgender actor and LGBTQ rights activist based in Kochi. While the charges against Jaanmoni stem, in part, from her mockery of Modi’s origins as a tea-seller, similar videos in Hindi had already gone viral, Sheethal observed.
A quick perusal of digital platforms such as Instagram or YouTube would reveal “more people who are cursing the prime minister,” echoed Ponnu Ima, a Kozhikode-based transmasculine nonbinary activist. Scrutinising a dissident’s language is the “best way to distract” people from standing together, Ponnu added. “Because [the] middle class will say, ‘We should, you know, oppose, but we should use civilised language.’”
Ponnu argued that those pushed to the margins cannot always be expected to articulate their anger against those in power politely. “It’s the language of the oppressed people… we curse a lot…because there is a lot of rage in us,” they said. At the same time, Ponnu added, there were “a lot of issues, especially class kind of issues” with Jaanmoni’s statements.
Within a society structured by caste, class, religion, and gender, it is inevitable that young people inherit ways of expressing anger that reproduce these prejudices, said Neha, the president of the All India Students Association, which is affiliated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist—Leninist) (Liberation). “All the lines that exist in society, abuses are along those lines, and that’s what every young person, including a young woman, a trans woman has heard growing up too,” Neha added.
Many male protestors had also used abusive language against the government, yet they did not face similar backlash, Neha pointed out. Women bore the brunt of such campaigns because, “it’s easier to shock the world and say that, ‘Oh look, this woman is abusing and our civilisation is under threat because women have lost their place,” Neha said. The attacks on Jaanmoni, they added, were “transphobic…and frankly misogynistic, nothing else.”
In a recent essay, Seema Chishti, the editor of The Wire, noted that opposition to the use of expletives must be situated within broader political contexts—whether the person using them was punching up or down, for instance. The country’s senior-most politicians including Modi, she observed, frequently resorted to offensive language. “The nation has heard Modi himself invoke ‘jersey cow’, even ‘vidhwa (widow)’ when referring to the Congress parliamentary party (CPP) chief, Sonia Gandhi,” Seema wrote. Several pro-government trolls, including those followed by senior BJP leaders, routinely issued death and rape threats, she added. A sanitised language that protects “the vilest of deeds is far worse than the most abusive language by a younger generation deployed in service of the right cause,” Seema concluded.
Between 24 and 27 July, while the protests were still ongoing, TG Mohandas, an RSS ideologue and former head of the BJP’s Intellectual Cell in Keralam, uploaded multiple videos vilifying the demonstrations. “I will impose a curfew in about a 4-square-kilometre area around Jantar Mantar. Then I would announce thrice for the crowd to disperse. After that, I will shoot. People will scatter away and run for their lives. Some may die, some may suffer disabilities. Within four hours, the situation will be calm. Then I will collect the bodies and take them to hospitals,” he said in one video.
In a separate video, Mohandas focused his ire on women protestors: “Gangrapes will happen. In this case, there won’t be any complaints as these are people who like being raped. There are women who like being raped, especially leftists, secular, democratic and proletarians.”
Following multiple complaints over these statements, Mohandas was booked on 29 July and arrested on 9 August. The RSS distanced itself from his remarks while the BJP termed the arrest “discriminatory,” according to news reports. Navya said that the BJP Mahila Morcha did not file any complaints in this case since several had already been filed soon after his comments gained attention.