Dileep acquitted: What was the 2017 Kerala actor sexual assault case, what was Dileep’s alleged role

The crime

On the night of February 17, 2017, six men allegedly abducted the actor while she was travelling from her home in Thrissur to Kochi. The men held her captive in her car and drove around Kochi, while Pulsar Suni, a history sheeter, allegedly assaulted her. Suni recorded the act on his mobile phone. Later, the accused dropped the actor near the home of a film director, who helped her contact the police. A case was registered on the same day.

As the investigation began, Pulsar Suni, who surrendered to the police, was named the prime accused. At the time of the assault, Suni had told the survivor that he was ‘implementing a contract’.

Dileep’s alleged involvement

Investigators found that the attack was not an isolated crime but part of a broader conspiracy aimed at intimidating and humiliating the survivor. This line of enquiry led to actor-producer Dileep, who had allegedly hired Pulsar Suni to commit the crime.

Dileep allegedly held a grudge against the survivor for outing his extramarital relationship with a fellow actor. Dileep’s involvement in the case also came under investigation after a letter which Pulsar Suni had written to him was leaked. In the letter, Suni was asking Dileep to complete the payment for the crime.

Dileep was added as the eighth accused in the case, and booked for criminal conspiracy, intimidation and destruction of evidence. Most of the accused in the case, including Pulsur Suni, were charged under multiple sections of the Indian Penal Code, including 120B (criminal conspiracy), 366 (kidnapping), 376D (gang rape), and others. Sections of the Information Technology Act, 2008, were also invoked because the assault was filmed with an intention to distribute.

Dileep was arrested on July 10, 2017. He was granted conditional bail that October.

The trial

In 2019, trial court judge Honey M Varghese was appointed to the Additional Special Sessions Court, Ernakulam; the trial began on January 30, 2020.

During the course of the trial, the prosecution accused the judge of being biased against the survivor. Two special public prosecutors quit the case. The survivor filed multiple petitions in higher courts to transfer the case from Judge Honey Varghese’s court; all her pleas were rejected.

The prosecution’s case, meanwhile, seemed to weaken as several witnesses who had initially testified against Dileep turned hostile. However, in 2021 a small-time film director Balachandrakumar, who claimed he was close to Dileep, released several recordings of the latter’s private conversations, one of which allegedly indicated that Dileep was in possession of footage of the assault.

Meanwhile, a forensic report revealed that the memory card holding the visuals of the assault, and in the custody of the court, was accessed illegally. The Kerala High Court ordered a probe into this allegation and found that three judicial employees had accessed the memory card. But no action was taken against them.

The final arguments in the case concluded in February this year, after which the judge sought clarifications till November.