During these interrogations, each member tells their own story of Ayyappan's unfaithful nature, drunkenness, and violent tendencies.

The inspector also discovers that Ayyappan had forcefully snatched—and later sold—a pair of earrings Rohini had bought as a wedding gift for her sister.

A month later, Ayyappan's body—stabbed with a broken glass bottle—and a key chain with the engravings "J.K." are recovered from a paddy field midway between the theatre and Rohini's house.

The police plan to use Kollappally as a ploy to identify Rohini's role in the murder and allow him to phone the troupe to inform them that he will perform in the show.

The film uses the Rashomon effect, a storytelling technique in which different characters provide contradictory interpretations or recollections of the same event.

[4][8][9] Yavanika was released along with Ivan Oru Simham (1982), starring Prem Nazir, but surpassed its box office collection.

[10] Film critic Kozhikodan included Yavanika on his list of the ten best Malayalam movies of all time.

[11] Premlal of The Cue felt that "Yavanika adhered to the characteristics of mainstream cinema and opened the way for broad possibilities to embrace the theme and characters with complexity, approaching them philosophically and psychologically.