Nearly two months after, Bhavana broke her silence on her social media on the alleged assault case which involved actor Dileep, the actress has once again talked about her five-year struggle in a recent interview

Without naming any actors who are accused of assaulting her, Menon revealed how her life turned upside down. ''My whole life was turned upside down. It was constant chaos in my mind, I was constantly asking myself why me, one time I used to think that it was a long nightmare was constantly blaming myself. There were so many times, I desperately wanted to go back to the time before it happened so that I could change everything and my life will be normal again,'' she said.

Further, she revealed how her trial turned her from a victim to a survivor. ''My trial happened in the year 2020 and I had to go courts for 15 days. Those 15 days when I was in the court, was a whole different level of trumatic experience. So when I came out of the court on the last day, after 15 hearings, I was feeling like a surviour and realised that I am a surviover not a victim anymore.'' She also recalled how people were insulting her saying that she had staged all the assault and were blaming her parents, Bhavna said: I was devastated my dignity was shredded to a million pieces.

Bhavana said the perpetrators were insulting her on social media after the traumatic incident and added that after the incident she was denied acting jobs in the Malayalam film industry. The notable exceptions were directors such as Aashiq Abu and Shaji Kailas, actor-turned-director Prithviraj, and actor Jayasurya.

For the unversed, The actress was kidnapped in 2017 when she was returning home from a shooting location and was subjected to sexual assault by a gang of men. The incident snowballed into a major controversy after the main accused, Pulsar Sunil, revealed that popular Malayalam actor Dileep was behind the assault. Dileep was arrested and is now on bail.