Parvathy Thiruvothu breaks down over Bengaluru murder of dog rescuer Sunitha
Sunitha was killed in Bengaluru while resisting sexual assault. Parvathy is asking why the employer is not yet under arrest, and where the dogs go now.
Parvathy Thiruvothu has put out an unusually raw set of posts over the killing of Sunitha, a 47-year-old animal-welfare activist from Thrissur who was assaulted and killed at a dog shelter in Sulibele, Bengaluru, where she had gone to work. The actor’s video and Instagram Stories, filmed in tears, are the loudest celebrity response yet on a case that began as a regional crime story and is now drawing wider attention.
“Sunitha was murdered. Sunitha didn’t just die. She was murdered,” Parvathy wrote, in a passage she later read out on camera. “I have not been able to stop crying furiously since I got to know that one of the most loving, kind women I have met was murdered while she resisted attempts of sexual assault by her murderer. Who was her employer? Who is still not arrested and brought to justice. This man killed her because he couldn’t assault her. And this is not his first time, and it won’t be his last time. What a safe country for our girls. Why do we need feminism though?”
The accused, named in Kerala reports as Deepak Krishnan, ran the shelter Sunitha had taken the job at to help support her husband, her four-year-old son and the dogs she had been rescuing back home. The reported assault was extreme: she was knocked to the ground, stomped on the chest and head, and her head slammed against a wall, after she told him she wanted to return to Kerala. She did not survive.
Parvathy described Sunitha as one of the kindest people she had personally known, and pulled the focus to the immediate fallout for the dogs in her care. “Sunitha had a large number of dogs under her care. Now that she has passed away, these dogs have been left destitute. Those who wish to adopt the pets that Sunitha cared for, or those willing to step forward to assist them, may contact me,” she wrote, offering to connect anyone willing to help with Sunitha’s family.
The two strands of her appeal have travelled together since: a question about why the employer is not yet in custody, and a practical pull at her own audience to keep the dogs alive. Sunitha’s family in Thrissur, meanwhile, is at the centre of a story that, on the evidence of the post, Parvathy is unwilling to let drift quietly off the news cycle.