A Crime Branch team probing the 2017 actor assault case in Kerala raided the residence of controversial politician PC George in Kottayam on Thursday, August 25. The Crime Branch sleuths were investigating the creation of a WhatsApp group ‘Dileepine Poottanam’ (Lock Up Dileep), purportedly formed to generate fake screenshots to malign some journalists, police officers and film personalities and derail the investigation into the case.
As per reports, while examining the phone of Dileep’s brother, the Crime Branch sleuths found a screenshot of the group, forwarded by one Shone George, who is PC George’s son. The WhatsApp chat screenshots, considered to be fake, showed the group had ADGP B Sandhya, actor Manju Warrier, Baiju Kottarakkara, Aashiq Abu, Nikesh Kumar, Pramod Raman, Liberty Basheer and advocate TB Mini, who represents the survivor in the case as members. Investigators had found that some of these screenshots were allegedly shared from the phone of Shone George to the phone of Anoop, brother of Dileep and an accused in the case.
After the fake WhatsApp chat came to light, filmmaker Baiju Kottakkara filed a complaint in Kochi in July, following which the case was taken up by the Crime Branch in the first week of August. During the raid on Thursday, George, also a former MLA, told mediapersons that police were asking for Shone’s phone, to which Anoop had placed a call in 2019. He added that his son already told the police in a letter that the phone was destroyed in 2019. "Now they (police) have seized the tab my grandchildren are using to study for their exams," he added. George has in the past expressed his support for actor Dileep in the case in which the latter is an accused. PC George was arrested twice this year for allegedly making hate speeches and later released on bail.
(With inputs from agencies)