The Kerala High Court on Tuesday, June 7, rejected a plea challenging the removal of Additional Director General of Police (ADGP) S Sreejith, who was supervising the investigation in the 2017 actor assault case in which actor Dileep is an accused, as the crime branch chief. A division bench of Chief Justice S Manikumar and Justice Shaji P Chaly said it was an administrative decision of the government and the court was not going to interfere in that.
The removal of Sreejith as head of the crime branch was challenged in the High Court by the Kerala State Board of International Human Rights Council which had alleged that the officer was transferred in order to safeguard the real perpetrators of the crime. The petitioner organisation had also contended that the officer was not even allowed to complete his two-year tenure before he was transferred.
The survivor actor, who has worked in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam films, was abducted and allegedly molested in her car for two hours by some persons who had forced their way into the vehicle on the night of February 17, 2017 and later escaped in a busy area. The entire act was filmed by those persons to blackmail the actor. There are 10 accused in the 2017 case and police have arrested seven. Dileep was arrested subsequently and released on bail.
Earlier this week, the Kerala High Court granted the Kerala Crime Branch an extension to complete its additional probe into the 2017 actor assault case, in which actor Dileep is the eighth accused. Justice Kauser Edappagath of the Kerala High Court allowed the police’s petition seeking an extension in the deadline to complete further probe into the case. The High Court has granted the police time till July 15 to complete the probe.
Further investigation in the case was launched by the police following fresh revelations by director Balachandra Kumar, who used to be Dileep’s friend. Balachandra Kumar had claimed that the accused actor was in possession of the visuals of the sexual assault before the lawyers and the actor watched it in the magistrate’s court in December 2017.