The Kerala High Court dismissing a petition by Dileep to quash the case against him and six others for alleged conspiracy to endanger police officers involved in the investigation of the actor assault case has vindicated the stance of the Crime Branch (CB), which is investigating the case.
The verdict is likely to motivate the investigators to conduct the probe with renewed vigour. The team headed by Superintendent of Police P. Mohanachandran is now immersed in the verification of huge volumes of digital evidence in the case.
Asked whether the verdict opens the possibility for custodial interrogation of Dileep, CB sources said the voluminous scientific data made it irrelevant at this point. “We have seized a few more phones and an I-mac system during the arrest of private security expert Sai Sankar. The forensic examination results of these seizures are yet to be received. It will be almost another month before we can complete vetting of the entire digital evidence running into thousands of images, chats, and calls. We have to go through them diligently to make full use of them,” the sources said.
The CB registered the case against Dileep, his brother Anoop, brother-in-law Suraj, relative Appu, friends Sarath and Baiju Chengamanad, and Sai Sankar on the revelations and audio clips provided by director P. Balachandrakumar, one-time acquaintance of Dileep.
Responding to the verdict, Mr. Balachandrakumar said he felt vindicated and that his credibility had been restored with the verdict as it showed the court had accepted the evidence given by him. He alleged that concerted attempts were made to discredit him. “I never faced even a petty case before the registration of this case in November 2021. Since then, multiple cases have been foisted on me. Probe in those cases is under way and am prepared to face it,” he said.
Mr. Balachandrakumar said he had given 27 audio clips to the investigators and that the few audio clips in the public domain were just a ‘teaser.’ The audio clips were of different durations, including ones lasting more than an hour .
