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Malayalam actor Dileep walked out of the Ernakulam District and Sessions Court on Monday, December 8, minutes after he was acquitted in the 2017 Kerala actor assault case, squarely blaming his former wife and prominent actor Manju Warrier. He also lashed out against police officers who investigated the case for charging him with the criminal conspiracy.
“If there was any criminal conspiracy at all, it was against me,” he said, while speaking to reporters outside the court premises.. Dileep was the eighth accused in the case, alleged to be the mastermind behind the abduction and sexual assault of a woman actor in a moving vehicle in Kochi in February 2017. On the morning of December 8, the Ernakulam District and Sessions Judge Honey Varghese said that the prosecution had failed to prove the criminal conspiracy in the case and acquitted Dileep, while finding the first six accused persons guilty.
“It was Manju Warrier who first suggested that there was a criminal conspiracy in the case. That was when the conspiracy against me began,” Dileep claimed.
Manju Warrier made the statement about a conspiracy on a gathering of actors in Kochi, soon after the sexual assault of their colleage in 2017. Dileep was also present on the occasion.
Dileep also blasted the police officials who investigated the crime, calling them criminals who cooked up a fake narrative against him, in cohorts with certain media. “They [the police] got together with the prime accused [Pulsar Suni] and his jail mates to concoct a fake story against me. They got together with some media and spread this fake story on social media. But the fake story fell apart in court. The real conspiracy was against me. In these nearly nine years, my image in the society and my life itself was ruined,” he stated, while thanking his family, friends and many lawyers including senior advocate Raman Pillai for their support.
Read our detailed coverage of the Kerala actor assault case over the years here.