The Kerala High Court, on Monday, October 14, dismissed the plea of the survivor in the Kerala actor assault case, seeking a police investigation by a special investigation team (SIT) into the alleged access of memory card containing visuals of the sexual assault. She contended that a thorough investigation was not conducted by the fact-finding committee, which was set up by the Kerala High Court. A bench headed by Justice CS Dias passed the order while hearing the survivor’s petition.
The High Court, in December 2023, directed a fact-finding enquiry into the matter, headed by the District and Sessions judge, Honey Varghese. The court, in its judgment in December 2023, had acknowledged that the memory card was illegally accessed thrice, while it was in the custody of different courts.
The third time it happened, the memory card was in the custody of the trial court hearing the actor assault case. It is this same court that conducted the probe. The probe had revealed that three people including a magistrate had accessed the memory card while it was in the custody of different courts.
In February 2024, she again moved the HC stating that she did not receive a copy of the investigation report that was submitted by the trial court to the High Court. In April, 2024, the High Court directed the Sessions court to hand over a copy of the investigation report to the survivor, stating that it was not to be treated confidential and that the survivor has a right to get the report. This was appealed by Dileep, the eighth accused in the case, but the court rejected his plea.
After receiving a copy of the investigation report, the survivor submitted a new petition at the High Court against the way in which the investigation was conducted by Judge Honey Varghese. It was done without the help of the police and without hearing her side, as instructed by the High Court, the survivor said in her plea. She requested that a special team under the supervision of the High Court should conduct the probe.
The State Forensic Science Laboratory had found that the illegal access had happened on three occasions – January 9 and December 13, 2018, and July 19, 2021. On the last occasion, the prime accused in the actor assault case, Pulsar Suni, was permitted to inspect the visuals in the trial court. However, Suni inspected the visuals at a different time of the day than when the visuals were illegally accessed, which was done using a different device. The unauthorised access was done using a Vivo mobile phone with Android system, which also contained applications like Whatsapp, Instagram, and Telegram that could be used to leak the visuals.
It was in February 2017 that the actor was assaulted in a moving car by a gang of men, allegedly under the directions of actor Dileep. The men recorded their attack on video. Pulsar Suni, the first accused, had given a memory card with the visuals of the attack to an advocate, who in turn handed it over to the Angamaly magistrate court. After a forensic examination at the Thiruvananthapuram lab, the memory card and pen drive carrying visuals were returned to the Angamaly court, where it remained sealed for a year, up to March 2018. For a year after that, the memory card was kept in the Ernakulam Principal and Sessions court. Afterward, the trial of the case began and the card was kept in Judge Honey's court.
