In the 75th episode of her YouTube show Sasneham Sreelekha on July 10, retired IPS officer R Sreelekha speaks about the 2017 actor assault case of Kerala, presenting its alleged mastermind Dileep as innocent of the crime he is accused of. Sreelekha was not part of the investigation of the case, but she was the Director General of Prisons and Correctional Services at the time the main accused Pulsar Suni and others were held in various prisons. Arguing that the police were acting under the pressure exerted by the media, Sreelekha alleges that the evidence against Dileep seemed fabricated and the witness accounts false.
Primarily, she questions the availability of a mobile phone for Pulsar Suni to use in his cell. Sreelekha rubbishes the prosecution statements about him procuring the phone with the help of a fellow prisoner who had left the prison on bail and she claims that it could have been brought in with the help of a police official. However, the deposition statements of Pulsar Suni’s cell mates, Vishnu and Vipin Lal, mention in detail how the phone was secured, corroborating each other’s accounts.
In her video, Sreelekha says, “I saw in the media that a cell mate spoke of Suni sneaking the phone in after going to court one day. But it can’t be done, because police officers and jail officers handle the criminals returning from court and will be thoroughly examined. Another cell mate said that the phone was brought in a sandal, but sandals are not allowed in prison. Even otherwise, there are video cameras in all the cells.”
Contrary to what Sreelekha says, the prosecution's case was that one of the cell mates of Pulsar Suni who left the jail, sneaked in the phone through someone else, and it has no link to any court visits by any inmate. The former inmate and his friend have told the court the same. It is not clear why Sreelekha chose to speak about a media report that said it happened in court. She had earlier courted controversy by allowing facilities to Dileep when he was in jail for a few months. Sreelekha has justified it by saying that she does it to all prisoners found in poor condition.
Sreelekha then admits that visuals showed Suni lying down with his hands on his ears, and the reflection on a wall clearly showed that he used a phone. “We questioned them on how they got the phone or the number, but they wouldn’t say. Later, we realised that a policeman who took Suni to court and brought him back had forcefully come into the jail, whispered something to Suni and seemed to hand something over to him. So we assumed the phone came from the policeman,” Sreelekha says.
Though Sreelekha appears surprised that an inmate should be able to use a phone inside the prison, such incidents have happened in the past and Crime Branch inquiries made after several such cases came to light.
In his deposition before the Additional Special Sessions court of Judge Honey Varghese, Vishnu Aravind, who shared a cell with Suni for a few days in March 2017, says that a plan was hatched to smuggle a phone in through a sandal with heels. Vishnu says he met Suni on March 10, 2017 when he was brought to their cell (in Kakkanad). Suni asked Vipin (the other cellmate) and Vishnu to help and Vipin said Suni has to tell them the whole story first. According to Vishnu, Suni told them that it was a quotation from Dileep who wanted Suni and his gang to sexually assault the woman actor, record it on video and clearly shoot the ring she was wearing on her finger. Vishnu told the court that Suni said that Dileep agreed to pay Rs 1.5 crore for it and that if it became a case, he would pay Rs 3 crore. "Suni told us that he would pay good money to Vipin and me for helping him", he told the court.
Vishnu further states that he got out on bail on March 23, 2017, and bought a pair of sandals to hide the phone as Suni instructed. He got the help of another friend called Mahesh to take the sandal to Suni since he couldn’t visit the jail for a few months after getting out, Vishnu says. He adds that the two went to a cobbler, got the phone fixed by removing the heel and hiding it inside, and then Mahesh visited the jail, while he waited outside.
In Mahesh’s statement before the Additional Sessions Court, he talks about visiting the jail with a cover containing the sandals, meeting Vipin Lal and handing the cover over. Vipin corroborates all of it. He adds that the first idea was to get the phone by having someone throw it over the jail fence, and the next thought was to get a police official to bring it in, but Suni didn’t want anyone other than the three cell mates in on it. So it was decided that when Vishnu went out on bail, he could fix a phone inside the heel of a sandal and send it through someone else, Vipin says.
Both Vishnu and Vipin mention a spot in the prison cell not covered by the CCTV cameras as the one where Suni used the phone to make calls.
However, Sreelekha claims that Vipin tried to tell the public that the police had forced him to say all this. She also laughs off the letter written by Suni to Dileep while he was in jail. Vipin had stated that he wrote the letter since Suni’s writing was full of spelling mistakes. Vishnu said that he met Vipin Lal at the Maradu court and collected the letter, adding that Suni wanted it given directly to Dileep and not be shown to anyone else. Mahesh too corroborated seeing the letter but not reading it. “But why would a person, who was promised Rs 3 crore for a quotation, ask for a money order of Rs 300 in the letter?” Sreelekha says scornfully. She describes Pulsar Suni as someone who only speaks lies and adds that she has heard from other prominent women actors how he was involved in similar abductions and blackmail and extorted money from them to hush it up.
TB Mini, the advocate of the survivor actor, said that Sreelekha’s allegation that Pulsar Suni has committed such crimes before can put Dileep in further trouble, reports Mathrubhumi.
Another claim made by Sreelekha was that a photograph showing Dileep and Pulsar Suni was photoshopped. However, Bidil, who had taken the photograph at a film set to get a selfie with Dileep and in which Suni was in the background, said that he had not edited the image. He had given his statement before the court regarding this, and the original photo was recovered at the time, Bidil told Mathrubhumi News.