A single judge bench of the Kerala High Court on Tuesday, February 28, rejected the Crime Branch’s plea to cancel actor Dileep’s bail in the 2017 sexual assault case of a female actor. The Ernakulam District and Sessions court had earlier rejected the State’s plea to cancel the bail, following which the State approached the High Court.

Rejecting the State’s plea, HC Judge Sophy Thomas noted that since all prosecution witnesses have been examined, there is no requirement to cancel the accused’s bail anticipating that he could influence them. “The trial court has made some observations and findings in their order which may tend to appear that the learned judges made up their mind as to the destruction of evidence and influencing, threatening the witnesses etc. alleged by prosecution,” she noted in her order, reports LiveLaw.

The plea to cancel the bail was made after allegations surfaced that while out on bail, Dileep tried to tamper with the evidence and influence the witnesses in the case. He was arrested and imprisoned for nearly three months in 2017 after the police listed him as the eighth accused in the charge sheet. The survivor was sexually assaulted in a moving car in Kochi, in February 2017. The perpetrators also recorded visuals of the assault, which were handed over to the court upon the arrest of the main accused, Pulsar Suni.

Most recently, the survivor had moved to the High Court for a copy of the trial court’s investigation report about an alleged leak of the said visuals. The visuals were stored in a memory card and kept in the custody of various courts since 2017 until they reached the trial court. After a report by the State Forensic Science Laboratory revealed that the memory card was illegally accessed thrice between 2018 and 2021, the High Court directed the trial court judge Honey M Varghese to conduct an enquiry.

Read: Memory card with visuals of Kerala actor's assault was illegally accessed thrice

This report was finally made available to the survivor by the Kerala High Court’s order in February 2024.

Read: Blow to Dileep: Kerala HC asks memory card probe report to be given to survivor