‘Like a cartel:’ Shootings point to turf war over rights to screen South Indian films

The day Thomas Shajan was expecting to see a South Indian action epic at a theatre in British Columbia, a spate of shootings thousands of kilometres away disrupted his plans.

Shajan, a self-described South Indian film fanatic, said he had been waiting months to see Malaikottai Vaaliban, a blockbuster Malayalam-language film about an aging warrior who reigns over a vast desert.

Hours before the scheduled showtime in late January, Cineplex sent a message saying the screening had been cancelled and the company would be issuing a refund “due to circumstances outside our control.”

Shajan, who moved to Surrey, B.C., from Kerala in southern India in 2017, said he was “heartbroken.”

“I was really sad and we were never told why,” he said in a phone interview earlier this month.

But the events that forced the cancellation soon became more clear.

Earlier in the day, police in Ontario reported shootings at four theatres in the Greater Toronto Area, which had been planning to show Malaikottai Vaaliban.

Windows were shattered in some locations, but no injuries were reported.

York Regional Police said this month that while the drive-by shootings in their area remained under investigation, they believe the incidents were targeted and involved the same suspect.

For Shajan and Saleem Padinharkkara, who distributes South Indian films in Canada, those reports did not come as a shock.

Padinharkkara, who lives in Ontario and is the founder of film distribution company KW Talkies, alleged that there is an ongoing campaign to prevent popular South Indian movies from appearing in major Canadian theatre chains like Cineplex.

He claimed there is a group of distributors trying to ensure that these films are only shown in a select group of smaller, independent