Malayalam actress assault case: 60 days after Dileep was arrested, a look at developments

Malayalam superstar Dileep, accused of hiring a rapist to seek revenge on his former co-star seven months ago, has completed two months in detention. The police is yet to frame formal charges and are still in search of clinching pieces of evidence for his involvement. They have only managed to prolong his custody telling the court, citing the utmost gravity of the crime, that if set free, he may influence witnesses and destroy evidence.

Dileep, 49, whose film career spans over a quarter of a century with some 130 films to his credit, took a break on 10 July when the police arrested him after a marathon interrogation that lasted more than 12 hours on end. The industry felt the pinch with an estimated loss of around Rs 50 crore, and this Onam season was mostly uneventful with prominent stars opting out from television shows for the first time.

The police had booked the actor, whose star value is comparable only to Mohanlal and Mammootty, under several sections of the IPC, including 376D (gang rape), 366 (kidnapping) and 120B (criminal conspiracy). Last week, the Angamaly chief judicial magistrate extended his custody for another two weeks, and he will be entitled to bail if investigators fail to file the chargesheet in a month.

More colleagues are coming out in support of him by the day, and they believe he’s being framed. This in turn has forced the police to once again move court to clip this movement. Prison authorities rejected no fewer than 10 applications to visit the star on Saturday. Senior actor and award-winning director Sreenivasan was the latest to join the ‘Dileep-would-not-do-that” chorus. “Dileep is a wise man, and he would not do that,” he told reporters in Kochi on Saturday. “That’s the truth, and I believe in it. Time will tell [if I’m right>.”

Earlier, many in the industry, including iconic filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan, had raised suspicions about implicating him. “The Dileep I’ve known for a year will not commit such a heinous crime. He came across as a loving, good person,” says the winner of 17 National Awards and a Padma Vibhushan. “Everyone is out to portray him in a bad light just because they want to feel good about themselves and want to be seen as goodness personified.”

His last movie, Pinneyum, featured Dileep and his wife Kavya Madhavan in the lead roles. Last week, the magistrate allowed him to go home for two hours under tight security to perform the death anniversary rituals of his father as the eldest son. Since then, actors, directors and producers have been making a beeline for the Aluva sub-jail where he’s lodged. But the Big M’s — Mohanlal and Mammootty — the chairman of the Malayalam Communications, the television arm of the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist), and young actors like Nivin Pauly and Dulquer Salmaan have been kept away.

Though stars like Jayaram and directors like Renjith refused to speak to the media, KB Ganesh Kumar, an actor, former minister and a legislator of the state’s ruling coalition, came down heavily on the police and wondered why others are silent. “We should back him until the court holds him guilty,” said Kumar, who is also the vice-president of the Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA), which had since expelled Dileep. Kumar also said he would try to convince Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan about the motive of the police, whom he accused of silencing people with the threat of incrimination, and put his foot down. The police say Kumar’s statement was part of an attempt to influence witnesses and divert investigation.

The Kerala High Court is to consider the plea of actor-director Nadirshah, who has been Dileep’s friend since his college days, for anticipatory bail on Wednesday. He says the police has asked him to an approver, or be ready to get charged for the crime along with his friend. He was the first to report a threat call from Sunil Kumar aka Pulsar Suni, the alleged rapist, demanding Rs 1.5 crore for not dropping Dileep’s name. But their complaint boomeranged.

Suni claims Dileep had promised the money upon executing their plot, which the police corroborate, though the star maintains he did not know him at all. A driver attached to the film industry, Suni was on the police’s radar for crimes ranging from stealing bikes, which earned him the nickname, to robbing money. At 7 pm on 17 February he hijacked the actor’s car near the Cochin International Airport and raped her in the moving car on the busy city roads, threatening to drug and take her to another gang of rapists. She was released at 11 pm, and her colleagues immediately alerted the police, who arrested him and four accomplices, including the driver of the car, within a week. Soon, they filed a chargesheet against them.

After the incident, a yesteryear star complained of a similar attempt by the man in 2011 and more reports from other “silent victims” whom he assaulted and blackmailed for ransom emerged. This case is also under trial now. But the case took a curious turn after Dileep’s complaint of attempted blackmail. The police concluded that it was a “quotation” and that the star wanted to teach the 31-year-old actor a lesson, as he believed she had a role in ending his 16-year marriage with another co-star, Manju Warrier.

His repeated attempts to obtain bail failed, as the police said he would tamper with evidence and influence witnesses. Nadirshah also fears that a similar fate awaits him, but the police deny his claim that he was under duress. “We are conducting a scientific investigation, and we don’t need to threaten anybody,” says AV George, a deputy superintendent who was one of his interrogators. “We ought to question him again.”

The high court judgment on 29 August rejecting his plea for a second time cites the police saying that in 2013, he hired Suni, who was then the driver of actor Mukesh, to capture the star in nude on video. In a Kochi hotel room booked in his name, Dileep paid Suni Rs 10,000 in advance and promised Rs 1.5 crore after the execution of his plan during the conspiracy initially. They met four times after that; the last time was in November last year at the same location near a mobile tower. Suni had recorded her in the nude on his mobile, but the police could not recover the cell phone or the memory card that contained the visuals. The court found “prima facie materials” to suspect the star’s involvement, that the “allegation was serious,” that the investigation reached “a crucial stage” and that “the possibility of other persons being implicated could not be ruled out.”

The court observed that by virtue of being a prominent film actor, distributor and producer, he is likely to wield considerable power in the industry and there the possibility of him influencing and threatening witnesses could not be ruled out. Dileep maintains that there was absolutely no material to connect him with Suni or his involvement in the alleged conspiracy and that he himself was a “prey to a conspiracy hatched by few persons to defeat and destroy” him.

He also accuses Warrier, his ex-wife and the mother of his teenage daughter Meenakshi (who lives with him), of influencing her friend, Additional Director General of Police B Sandhya, who interrogated him, to arraign in the case. He argues there was a “large-scale conspiracy” hatched by a small but powerful section of the film industry and certain others who could manage police, media and political leaders to spread “utter falsehood and malicious stories” about him for months together. He argues the police theory was solely on the confessional statement of Suni, “who is a known criminal”, to implicate him and the apex court had ruled that “the confession of a co-accused cannot be the sole basis for incriminating another.”

A person called Vishnu telephoned Nadirshah on 10 April and said that some people in the industry had approached Suni to implicate him. The same day, he shared the audiotape of the call and the phone number of the caller with Loknath Behera, the police chief. Dileep claimed that the victim or the witnesses had said nothing about his alleged role in the attack. He said he had enemies in the industry as he ended a “film shutdown” by distributors and formed another body against them. After the arrest, they succeeded in destroying his image as a popular actor, he said. But all these arguments fell flat as the prosecution insisted that he was the conspirator and the investigators needed more time before he could be set free to reinforce pieces of evidence that they had already gathered.

The police submitted to the court the statements of two witnesses who had seen both of them at one place, and hence “it relied on the oral and documentary evidence unearthed in the course of investigation based on confession.” “The prosecution claimed that immediately after the incident, attempts were made by the first accused (Suni) to contact (Dileep), through others. It is alleged that even after [being> lodged in jail, he had tried to contact him,” the judgement reads. The police chief says they would make formal charges against the star only after collecting enough evidence and that he would remain behind bars until then. “The court has endorsed the views of the investigating team. We’ll go for charge-sheeting only when we are satisfied with the evidence we collect,” Behera said. “We have got 90 days to chargesheet him (the mandatory period after which he would be entitled to bail). We have enough time (left) to collect every piece of evidence. We’ll do it properly.”