Kerala actor assault case: HC judge recuses as victim seeks hearing by another bench

Buy Now | Our best subscription plan now has a special price

“During the relevant time, the trial was conducted by Justice Edappagath, who was then the principal sessions judge in Ernakulam. Hence this court may be pleased to send this writ petition to another bench,” the victim stated in the petition.

Justice Edappagath subsequently recused himself from hearing the petition.

The petitioner urged the court to end “illegal interference” and to ensure a complete, fair and impartial investigation “without any unlawful interference from any source”. Kerala HC Chief Justice S Manikumar will consider the bench to hear the actor’s plea.

With the petitioner also alleging political interference, Opposition leader V D Satheesan of the Congress claimed that a CPI(M) leader had played the role of middleman in thwarting the probe, while CPI(M) state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishan said the LDF government has firmly stood with the survivor. Balakrishnan also called the petition “mysterious”, coming as it does so close to rthe by-election to Thrikkakara Assembly seat, scheduled next week.

The victim’s advocate, P B Mini, denied the petition has anything to do with the by-election. “We have approached HC since the time given for the investigating agency to complete further probe would be over by the end of this month (May 31). The Crime Branch has not so far sought more time for completing the probe,’’ she said.

In her petition, the victim accused the state government of having backtracked from its Constitutional commitment of conducting a fair, free and complete investigation in the case. “Dileep (renowned Malayalam actor who is one of the accused in the case) has unlawfully influenced some of the politicians in the ruling front and attempted to interfere with further investigation and (to) prematurely close the case,” the petitioner alleged. “The prosecution and the investigating agency are threatened by political higher-ups to end the investigation halfway and file the additional final report in a half-cooked manner. This clearly establishes the nexus between the accused and the ruling front.”

She alleged that Dileep’s advocates were interfering in the case by tampering with evidence and influencing witnesses. Although the investigating agency had made all attempts to probe into the role of the advocates, that did not happen, as the advocates have “substantial influence with the ruling government”.

The petitioner stated: “It is learnt that some assurances were secured by those advocates from the political authorities that further investigation will not reach them. So there is an agenda for the political and administrative higher-ups that no investigation is done in respect of the illegal access, tampering and transmission of the contents of the memory card is conducted due to reasons best known to them.’’

The actor, who had earlier demanded — unsuccessfully — to remove the trial court judge, on Tuesday raised serious allegations against the judge — Honey M Varghese. She said the trial court had never communicated the report regarding tampering of the memory card, and called it a serious misconduct by the judge.

The actor alleged that even though the Forensic Science Laboratory had submitted a report on the alleged tampering before the trial court, the judge did not take any action to find out the culprit, the reason why the hash value was changed, and how many times the culprits accessed the memory card. She alleged that the conduct of the judge in this case shows that she wanted to illegally help the culprits.

The HC has set time until May 31 to wrap up further probe into the assault case. On April 4, the investigating officer had petitioned the trial court to get the memory card examined at the FSL. But, the petitioner stated, the court has not so far sent the card to the Lab. She petitioned the high court seeking an interim direction to the investigating agency not to  file the final report in the abduction case until the report is received from the FSL after examining the memory card, kept in the trial court.

Meanwhile, Congress leader Satheesan said, “The government should investigate the serious allegation raised by the survivor. By torpedoing the probe, the CPI(M)-led government has proved that it is anti-women.”

CPI(M) leader Balakrishan said, “There is no basis for the allegations against the government. Let the court itself examine them. It is mysterious that the petition has come when the by-election is going to be held at Thrikkakara.”