Kerala actor assault: HC admits plea by prosecution against lower court order

The sensational 2017 sexual assault case of a Kerala actress continues to take new twists and turns in the courts. On Tuesday (December 28), the Kerala High Court accepted a new petition filed by the prosecution against a trial court’s order, which had rejected their plea to summon several more witnesses and to get certified copies of the call detail records of all the accused, including that of Malayalam actor Dileep, who is accused number 8 in the case.

Justice Viju Abraham issued notice to all the accused in the case, seeking their stand on the prosecution’s two separate petitions and listed the matters for further hearing on January 6, 2022, said media reports.

The trial has been going on since 2018 and on November 16, 2021, the prosecution had approached the court with a petition to examine 16 witnesses. Nine of them happened to be additional witnesses, while seven had been examined before. According to the petition submitted by the prosecution, some of the witnesses were required to be recalled to identify the accused persons.

On December 21, Judge Honey Verghese of the Ernakulam Additional Special Sessions Court allowed the re-examination of three witnesses but she had denied permission for 13 others ruling that these witnesses had been examined earlier and that it was not necessary to call them again.

Moreover, she had also rejected the prosecution’s plea seeking original customer applications in respect of 25 mobile numbers, as well as proper certificates, in accordance with Section 65 (B) of the Evidence Act, for the call detail records of eight numbers, including that of Dileep. The fresh certificates have been sought as the earlier ones “did not furnish the entire details,” the petition had said.

In its new petition submitted before the Kerala High Court, the prosecution argued that the trial court should have permitted the prosecution for further examination of Vasudevan who had said that he had seen ‘Pulsar’ Sunil at the shooting location in Thrissur but he could not identify the prime accused while in the dock. Anto Joseph, who was one of the first to visit the victim in this case could also not be examined. Yet another witness Sathyaoorthy, nodal officer of BSNL, could not be examined by the trial court.

Also read: Kerala actor assault: HC defers hearing after govt points to lapses of trial judge

Further, in its petition, the prosecution stated that the whole endeavour is to get to the truth and to punish the real culprit in a trial for criminal offence. “Shutting out the evidence on technical grounds may not be conducive to the best interest of Justice”, said the petition.

Back in November 2020, Special Public Prosecutor A Suresan who was involved with the case quit alleging that the judge displayed a discriminatory approach. A plea to transfer the case to another court was rejected by the High Court.

According to a report in NewsMinute, film producer Balachandrakumar, has made sensational claims alleging that he saw ‘Pulsar’ Sunil in Dileep’s house and that the actor had a copy of the video of the sexual assault. Balachandrakumar is quoted as saying in the report that Dileep, his family members and a VIP guest had watched the video clip of the assault of the actress in his house.

The case pertains to the abduction and sexual assault of a young popular female actor, who worked in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam films. She was abducted and allegedly molested inside her car for two hours by some of the accused, who had forced their way into the vehicle on the night of February 17, 2017, and later escaped in a busy area.

The entire act was filmed by some of the accused. A few days later, on February 23, ‘Pulsar’ Sunil, a driver was arrested, along with a few others.

The major twist in the case unfolded in July 2017, when the Aluva police arrested superstar Dileep. The chargesheet filed against Dileep named him as accused number 8 in the case and alleged that Dileep had paid contract money to ‘Pulsar’ Sunil to abduct and assault the female actor, record visuals of the assault, and hand them over to Dileep, reportedly to blackmail her.