The Kerala High Court on Monday allowed the survivor to implead in the plea moved by actor Dileep questioning a fresh probe into the 2017 actor assault case.
She moved the court on February 15 requesting it to hear her in detail before passing any order on Dileep’s plea to quash the fresh case. After director Balachandra Kumar’s disclosure surfaced in last December the crime branch had filed a conspiracy case against Dileep and four others. Later Dileep moved the court to quash the fresh case saying it was a ploy to delay the verdict. He was granted anticipatory bail in the fresh case two weeks back.
Hearing Dileep’s plea to quash the new FIR, Justice Kauser Edappagath asked his counsel if a witness, even if he is unreliable, comes out with fresh information investigating agencies have every right to examine them. But senior counsel B Raman Pillai contended that every accused has a right to a fair trial. He said the sole intention behind the new case was to protract the trial since the prosecution had failed to produce any material evidence against Dileep.
The fresh case relates to an alleged conspiracy to attack investigating officers who probed the actor assault case of 2017. The case took another turn last month after director Kumar claimed that Dileep hatched a conspiracy to do away with officers who investigated the case and he was also in possession of the woman actor’s assault video. He said the conversation allegedly took place in November 2017 at the actor’s flat in Kochi. Later, a new case was registered against him and four others including his brother and brother-in- law.
But Dileep said one of the investigating officers was behind the move and he forced the director to raise fresh charges against him. He said the new case was foisted on him after the prosecution found that its contentions in the actor assault case were weak. A leading south Indian woman actor was abducted and assaulted in a moving vehicle in Kochi in 2017 and Dileep is an accused. The fresh case came up at a time when the trial was about to conclude.
