Advocate Renjith Marar, the court-appointed amicus curie in the case of alleged leak of visuals of the 2017 sexual assault of an actor in Kerala, has recused himself from the case, following allegations of conflict of interest by the prosecution. Also it has been argued that there are other tenable reasons which are confidential in nature, for demanding the removal of Renjith Marar.
Marar had taken part in many media discussions, favouring actor Dileep, who is the alleged mastermind of the assault on the actor and is the eighth accused in the case, it has been pointed out.
The survivor actor had filed a separate petition to the High Court, asking for an investigation into the alleged leak of the memory card which contained visuals of the attack while the device was in the custody of a lower court. Renjith was appointed as the amicus curiae to give guidelines in the case.
Dileep had last week submitted a counter plea, asking the court to not proceed with the survivor's petition for probing into the alleged leak of visuals. He claimed that it was a tactic used to delay the proceedings of the original trial case of the sexual assault, in which he was an accused. However, Dileep's plea was dismissed by the court.
Questions over the alleged leak of visuals arose last year after a report of the State Forensic Science Lab said that the memory card had been accessed twice in 2018, when it was in the custody of different courts. The hash value of the device was also found to be altered, indicating a possible change of content of the memory card. (Hash functions are used to store and retrieve data.)
The attack on the survivor took place in February 2017, when she was travelling in a car in Kochi. The trial case has been going on for three and a half years now.