Malayalam actress assault case: Ex-police chief TP Senkumar claims no evidence found against Dileep after questioning

TP Senkumar, the director-general of police who just retired, has said that after actor Dileep was questioned for 13 hours in the case of the Malayalam actress who was abducted and assaulted, no evidence was found against him, reports The Telegraph. [caption id=“attachment_3745811” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Dileep. Image from Facebook[/caption] Still, Senkumar said that he is not giving a clean chit to anyone involved in the case. “I cannot say if he is involved in the case or not. But on the day Dileep was questioned, there was no evidence against him,” he clarified, adding that evidence is different from suspicion. The ex-police chief questioned why the officer leading the probe, inspector-general of the crime branch Dinendra Kashyap, was not present during Dileep’s questioning. He also asserted that the probe must not be made on suspicion. Dileep’s name was tagged in the case after it appeared in a letter written by the main accused Pulsar Suni’s former cellmate in which he was asked to pay Rs 1.5 crore so that Suni would not implicate him. This cellmate, Vipin Lal, has now come forward and said that he wrote the letter due to pressure from Suni and some jail officials. “I wrote the letter under duress from Suni and some jail officials. Dileep is not involved in the case,” said Lal when he produced in front of a magistrate for a hearing at the Ernakulam district court complex. Lal and another inmate Vishnu have been accused of helping Suni to make phone calls from the Ernakulam jail. It is suspected that he made these calls to Nadirshah and Appunni. A man named Imran has been accused of supplying the phone to Vishnu, who in turn gave it to Suni. The incident involving the Malayalam actress in question took place on 17 February. Many developments have occurred in this case including Dileep’s brother Anoop and actor Dharmajan being summoned for questioning, Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA) president Innocent protecting Dileep and feigning ignorance about the case, and Dileep himself claiming that he does not know Pulsar Suni but adding that the actress and Suni were ‘good friends’. He even remarked that she should be careful while making friends; the actress has called these claims baseless and has said that she will approach a court if statements of such a nature are made. Suni said that he would reveal the “big names” involved in the case. The police mentioned that it is investigating a conspiracy angle in the case, and that the probe team has listed the names of people from the Malayalam film industry who are suspects.