The Kerala Crime Branch office is all set to interrogate actor Dileep again in connection with the alleged conspiracy to ‘finish off’ the investigating officers probing the ongoing sexual assault case of 2017. Dileep is one of the prime accused in the case and is currently out on bail after spending eight weeks in jail.
The fresh round of questioning will centre around the report from the state-run forensic laboratory located in the state capital, on three mobile phones used by the actor and his aides. The analytical reports of these phones are expected to be handed over to the police probe team on Friday, February 18. Earlier this week, Dileep had approached the High Court seeking quashing of the FIR in the second case.
The case pertains to the abduction and assault of a woman actor in Kerala in 2017, when she was travelling in a car in Kochi. Within days, a man called Pulsar Suni was arrested in the case and charged as the main accused. Dileep, the eighth accused, was arrested months later for allegedly masterminding the attack on the actor as an act of personal vengeance. However, he later came out on bail and submitted a number of petitions and pleas which delayed the trial in the case for a long time. It finally began in December 2019 and is still going on in the trial court.
A former friend and director, Balachandrakumar, had released a series of audio clips in which Dileep and others allegedly conspired to murder a few of the officials investigating the actor assault case. Deputy Superintendent of Police, Baiju Paulose, who is also an investigating officer in the case, filed a complaint against Dileep and the others, following which the Crime Branch took up the investigation.
After several days of arguments in the court earlier this month, Dileep managed to get anticipatory bail in the case on February 7. The next day, Dileep, his brother Anoop and brother-in-law Suraj had submitted their voice samples in a state-run recording studio, which were sent for forensic examination.
The survivor in the 2017 actor assault case, on February 15, filed an impleading petition in the Kerala HC in connection with Dileep’s plea in court against further investigation being conducted in the case. The survivor has asked that the court hear her petition too, before passing any orders in the case. In view of the impleadment plea on behalf of the survivor, the high court adjourned the matter to February 21.