It has taken eight years for the verdict in the Kerala actor assault case to be delivered. The appalling abduction and sexual assault of a top Malayalam woman actor happened in February 2017.
The case has been a watershed not just for India’s MeToo movement and film industries beyond Kerala, but also for how the legal system navigates such cases.
One reason for the prolonged trial is that Dileep, a popular Malayalam actor accused of masterminding the assault, filed multiple petitions in several courts.
He was arrested in July 2017 and was imprisoned for 85 days before walking out on bail.
Since then, Dileep has filed plea after plea in various courts, demanding various documents including the video of the sexual assault itself. He also repeatedly sought a CBI probe which the Kerala High Court rejected.
Dileep’s petitions for CBI probe and discharge from trial
In June 2018, Dileep moved the High Court stating he was falsely implicated in the case. He demanded a CBI probe alleging that the police investigation was dishonest and malafide. The prosecution contended that the plea was a tactic to protract the trial. A single judge bench dismissed the petition in December 2018.
In January 2020, he again approached the Additional Special Sessions Court with a petition seeking to discharge him from the actor abduction case. The special court dismissed it after accepting the prosecution’s stance that there was sufficient evidence against him.
In December 2021 he filed another discharge petition in the Supreme Court but withdrew it.
Dileep's plea challenging the dismissal of the plea seeking CBI probe was heard six years later in April 2025. Dileep contended that although a charge sheet was filed on April 17, 2017, the mobile phone used to record the incident was not recovered, and the investigation should have continued to retrieve it.
It made the court remark Dileep was using the writ petition as a defence against the trial. The bench dismissed the appeal, stating that the trial before the Principal District and Sessions Court in Ernakulam is nearing completion.
Supreme Court’s refusal to change trial court
The survivor too has moved courts on multiple occasions. She has asked that the case be transferred to a different trial court, or to a different judge, alleging misconduct by the trial court judge Honey M Varghese.
Judge Honey Varghese took over the case in 2019, while she was a Special Judge at CBI special court in Kochi, following an order by the Kerala High Court, which heeded to the survivor’s request for a woman judge. She later moved to the Ernakulam Principal District and Sessions Court, where the trial was held.
However, the survivor later alleged bias and misconduct by the judge, and petitioned to transfer the case to a different court.
The survivor alleged that Judge Honey Varghese had acted with an agenda due to political interference in the case, and that she had connections with one of the main accused.
The Supreme Court rejected her plea.
The court said it cannot allow a petition alleging bias, and that such petitions would not allow judges to hear cases without fear and favour.
A bench of Justices Ajay Rastogi and CT Ravikumar said that such matters must be decided in the High Court. The Kerala HC had already rejected a similar petition, saying the survivor was probably influenced by “wrong perceptions…created by the media.”
The Supreme Court said once the High Court had ruled there was no bias, it would set a wrong precedent for the apex court to intervene.
Access to digital evidence for accused in sexual assault cases
Some of the court rulings in petitions related to this monumental trial have had major consequences to this case and even beyond it, for how the legal system deals with cases of sexual assault, particularly those involving digital evidence.
Dileep first moved the Angamaly Magistrate Court asking for access to all documents including the visuals. In February 2018, when the court said no to handing over visuals, Dileep went to the HC. With the High Court asking why he needed a copy of the visuals when he had already been allowed to watch them, Dileep moved the Supreme Court in December 2018.
His claim by then was that accessing a copy of the visuals could help prove his innocence, and he hinted that there was no sexual assault but there was consent.
In November 2019, the apex court rejected his plea, citing privacy and safety concerns of the survivor. The court allowed Dileep to inspect the video again subject to conditions securing the survivor’s privacy, but did not let him access a copy.
The SC held that the contents of a memory card or pen drive must be regarded as a document, and if the prosecution is relying on it, “the accused must be given a cloned copy thereof to enable him/her to present an effective defence during the trial.”
But considering the contents of the memory card in this particular case, the court only allowed Dileep and his lawyer or an expert to inspect the visuals to protect the survivor’s privacy.
This ruling has had repercussions beyond the actor assault case.
In the Prajwal Revanna sexual assault case in Karnataka, the SC ruling on Dileep’s appeal was cited by the High Court to dismiss the former MP’s plea seeking access to all electronic evidence in his case.
Police said around 70 women are seen in the visuals allegedly recorded by Prajwal Revanna. Justice M Nagaprasanna criticised Prajwal’s plea to access all images and videos retrieved from his driver’s phone, which comprises most of the digital evidence in the case.
Stressing that the privacy of individuals not directly involved in the case must be protected, the judge said that Prajwal Revanna could only inspect evidence directly related to the case in which he is accused of sexually assaulting a domestic worker. Prajwal Revanna is accused of sexual assault by five of the women seen in the videos.
HC guidelines on handling digital evidence with sexual content
In the Kerala case, it was later found that the memory card was accessed illegally on multiple occasions despite being in a court’s custody. Unhappy with a court-ordered inquiry into the illegal access of the visuals, the survivor had sought an investigation by a special investigation team (SIT) of the police, but this was rejected by the Kerala High Court.
Before that, however, the High Court laid down comprehensive guidelines for the police and courts in handling “sexually explicit materials” in December 2023.
Taking serious note of the finding that the memory card was connected to devices that could’ve copied, transferred, or altered the visuals, the court acknowledged that the “emotional and psychological harm being suffered by the victim is beyond imagination.”
The guidelines stress stringent measures for how the accused and their lawyers can access such evidence.
The court also urged the Union and state governments to frame similar rules on handling of electronic records with sexual content.
Among other directions, the guidelines say: “Any electronic record containing Sexually Explicit Materials that has been received for destruction [is] to be destroyed without providing any opportunity for copying or extraction, and the procedure of destruction to be reported to Court.”
