While Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Law Minister P Rajeev asserted that the investigation and prosecution were handled “effectively” and promised to file an appeal, excerpts from the trial court judgment paint a very different picture.
Published Dec 14, 2025 | 4:30 PM ⚊ Updated Dec 14, 2025 | 5:47 PM
Actor Dileep.
Synopsis: The judgment of a local court in Kerala, which acquitted actor Dileep in the 2017 Kerala actress assault case, has raised several concerns about the prosecution’s handling of the case, contradicting the ruling LDF government’s claims of effective prosecution. It points to critical lapses, including unexplained post-arrest phone usage, the absence of the SIT head during interrogation, and unproven allegations of a fake WhatsApp group and destruction of evidence.
The acquittal of actor Dileep, the eighth accused in the 2017 actress sexual assault case, has triggered widespread public outrage and placed the Kerala government’s defence of the prosecution under sharp scrutiny.
Soon after the acquittal, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had maintained that the prevailing assessment among both the legal fraternity and the public was that the prosecution and investigation had been conducted well.
Law Minister P Rajeev said the investigation and prosecution had been handled “effectively” and presented the case forcefully before the court. He also announced that the government would file an appeal against the verdict.
However, excerpts from the trial court judgment delivered by Justice Honey M Varghese on 8 December present a very different picture.
It records that the prosecution failed to prove the charges levelled against Dileep and that the evidence placed before the court was insufficient to establish conspiracy or the disappearance of evidence.
The judgment lays bare a trail of investigative and prosecutorial lapses, missteps that may have fatally weakened the case, particularly on the crucial charges of conspiracy and destruction of evidence.
These findings directly puncture the government’s claims about the strength of the investigation and prosecution.
The court’s dissection of the prosecution case exposes a recurring fault line. A serious allegation was repeatedly mentioned by the survivor, yet was never meaningfully investigated.
While rejecting the prosecution’s claim that accused No. 8, Dileep, conspired with accused No. 1, Pulsar Suni, to humiliate, sexually assault and record nude visuals of the survivor, the court turned to a more fundamental question: for what purpose was the crime committed?
In the final report filed on 18 April 2017, the police asserted that accused Nos. 1 to 6, acting with common intention, kidnapped the survivor and recorded her nude visuals to extort money by threatening circulation.
However, this version sat uneasily with the survivor’s own First Information Statement.
From the very beginning, the survivor’s account consistently spoke of a “quotation” for capturing her nude visuals, allegedly at the instance of a woman.
According to her statement, this information came directly from accused No. 1, who told her that the visuals were to be delivered to those who had entrusted him with the task.
When she sought clarity on the identity of those involved, accused No. 1 reportedly responded cryptically, saying she would understand once she knew who her “enemies” were.
The court noted that this was not a stray or vague allegation. The survivor reiterated that accused No. 1 informed her that the quotation had been given by a lady.
Yet, despite this being part of Ext. P1 and Ext. P117, the prosecution made no attempt to probe this angle during the initial investigation.
Strikingly, the final report abandoned the ‘quotation’ narrative altogether, replacing it with a theory of financial extortion allegedly hatched by accused Nos. 1 to 6.
The court found no explanation for why the Special Investigation Team, led by senior officers, chose not to investigate the survivor’s specific allegation that a woman had commissioned the crime.
The only aspect left open for further investigation, the court observed, was the recovery of the mobile phone allegedly used to record the visuals.
The prosecution later argued that the survivor was afraid to name Dileep earlier. The court rejected this explanation as untenable.
With a full-fledged SIT and senior officials involved, there was no evident reason for fear or inhibition.
Moreover, the survivor herself had given interviews in 2015 making allegations against Dileep, a fact that, the court remarked, should at least have been brought to the SIT’s notice.
Equally telling was the absence of any statement by the survivor or her brother, during multiple interrogations, about Dileep’s involvement prior to the filing of the final report. This silence, coupled with the lack of investigation into the alleged quotation, weakened the prosecution’s narrative irreparably.
The judgment also points to another neglected dimension: the association of certain women with Pulsar Suni around the time of the alleged offence.
In its judgment, the court also flagged what it described as serious and unexplained omissions surrounding three individuals, Sreelakshmi, Shiny Thomas and Kevin Thomas, whose alleged links with the prime convict were never properly probed.
The judgment notes that Sreelakshmi, who had contacted prime accused Pulsar Suni immediately before the alleged commission of the offence, was never cited as a witness.
This omission, the court observed, is difficult to justify, especially since documents existed to prove the contact. If Suni was indeed engaged in a “mission” at that time, Sreelakshmi could have shed crucial light on what that mission was, or whether it existed at all.
The prosecution’s own case claimed that Suni and Sreelakshmi were in a “thick relationship”.
That alone, the court reasoned, made her a competent and necessary witness, capable of clarifying not just the events surrounding the incident but also the alleged association between accused No. 1, Pulsar Suni, and accused No. 8, Dileep.
The failure to even examine her, the court said, casts a “double doubt” on the prosecution narrative, particularly in light of Suni’s claim that the visuals were recorded as part of a “quotation” entrusted by a woman.
That thread resurfaces with Shiny Thomas, another woman allegedly in contact with the convicts.
The court pointed out that she was neither properly interrogated nor was the Forensic Science Laboratory report on her mobile phone produced as evidence. This was despite the survivor stating in her First Information Statement that Suni had spoken about a “quotation by a lady”.
The omission, the court held, seriously weakens the prosecution’s claim that the humiliation of the survivor was carried out at the behest of accused No. 8.
What makes the lapse more consequential is the inconsistency in Suni’s own versions.
During the commission of the offence, he allegedly stated that the act was part of a “quotation” given by a woman.
Later, while in jail, he shifted his stance and named accused No. 8, based on a letter which, according to the court, became the foundation for roping him into the case.
In such circumstances, the court underlined, the prosecution was duty-bound to investigate the alleged involvement of the unnamed woman, at least to rule it out.
Finally, the judgment also refers to the suppression of material related to Kevin Thomas, another person whom Suni contacted after the offence, noting that the collective non-examination of Sreelakshmi, Shiny Thomas and Kevin Thomas assumes critical relevance, particularly when the prosecution failed to conclusively prove a conspiracy between accused No. 1 and accused No. 8.
One of the key aspects examined by the court was the arrest of Dileep (Accused No. 8).
While the court held that failure to prove conspiracy between Accused Nos. 1 (Sunil alias Pulsar Suni) and 8 cannot by itself render the arrest illegal, it nevertheless flagged serious unanswered questions surrounding the manner in which the arrest and subsequent custody were handled.
The court noted that the mobile phone allegedly used by Dileep at the time of arrest showed activity from 6.05 pm on 10 July 2017, till 5.53 am on 17 July 2017—even after his arrest.
There were as many as 102 incoming and outgoing calls during this period.
Dileep’s brother deposed that the phone was handed over to him on the morning of 11 July 2017. Yet, the undisputed fact remains that the phone continued to be used till Dileep was produced before the jurisdictional magistrate. How this was possible was never explained by the prosecution.
More damagingly, the Call Detail Records (CDRs) of this phone were produced only up to 30 June 2017—days before the arrest. The defence argued that non-production of CDRs till the date of arrest was a deliberate attempt to suppress evidence of post-arrest phone usage.
The court acknowledged that all belongings of an arrestee are legally required to be seized at the time of arrest, a procedure that was admittedly not followed in this case.
Although the court clarified that these lapses would not invalidate the arrest, it underscored that the prosecution failed to explain crucial inconsistencies.
Another serious concern highlighted by the court was the absence of the head of the SIT during Dileep’s interrogation at the Police Club.
Dinendra Kashyap IPS, then IGP (Crimes), North Zone, and the designated SIT head, was not present during the questioning.
The court took note of the presence of B Sandhya IPS, the supervisory officer, but observed that even after a specific letter from then State Police Chief TP Senkumar stressing the importance of the team leader’s involvement in sensitive cases, the IGP remained absent during interrogation.
The prosecution failed to explain this absence. The judgment also records that no formal notice was served on Dileep for interrogation.
Additionally, the prosecution admitted the existence of telephonic conversations and messages between Dileep and the then Rural SP AV George—facts that raised further questions about procedural propriety.
Quoting Senkumar’s letter, the court reiterated that “no amount of suspicion can substitute for evidence” and warned that deviation from proper investigative hierarchy would inevitably lead to controversies—a warning that appears prophetic in hindsight.
The prosecution had also alleged that Dileep created a fake WhatsApp group titled “ദിലീപിനെ പൂട്ടണം” (To Lock Dileep) to mislead the court and create a public perception that he was being falsely implicated.
The court, however, found no evidence to support this claim.
Crucially, Shon George—the person who forwarded the screenshot of the alleged WhatsApp group and the most competent witness to speak about its origin—was never examined, despite being listed as a prosecution witness.
In the absence of his testimony, the court held that it was impossible to conclude that the group was created with the assistance or involvement of Dileep.
Perhaps the most consequential failure identified by the court relates to the charge that Dileep destroyed electronic evidence.
The prosecution alleged that he deleted conversations related to the crime from his mobile phone, thereby causing disappearance of evidence.
The court ruled that before such a charge can be sustained, the prosecution must first establish that the deleted data was directly connected to the offence.
In this case, the nature of the allegedly deleted data was never clearly placed before the court.
The prosecution claimed that calls were made via WhatsApp or the Botim app, but forensic examination, tower location data, and call location details—all critical to substantiate this claim—were conspicuously absent from the evidence produced.
Although police witnesses stated that tower location details had been collected, none were produced before the court. The judgment questions why the investigating officers failed to collect and present CDRs and location details if such crucial evidence was indeed available.
The prosecution further alleged that Dileep’s lawyers took his mobile phones and those of his associates to a private lab in Mumbai—Lab Systems India Private Ltd—with malicious intent to delete or tamper with data and influence the trial.
This allegation, too, collapsed under scrutiny. The court noted that the Special Public Prosecutor did not even suggest to the relevant witness that the lawyers had deleted data. On the contrary, cross-examination elicited a categorical statement that no deletion or manipulation had taken place.
Evidence showed that there was no activity on the phones after 7 January, 2022. Also, it was recorded the last activity at 12.32.49 am on that day, well before the devices were sent to the Mumbai lab. On this basis, the court concluded that the prosecution failed to bring any evidence to substantiate its claim of data deletion.
“The evidence would also show that no deletion of data as stated by the prosecution has been taken place from the mobile phone of accused no.8,” the judgment records.
The judgment also serves as a response from Justice Honey M Varghese to the storm of allegations swirling around the trial itself.
Buried deep in the order copy, paragraph 955 invokes an ancient legal maxim to draw a clear line between adjudication and accusation: Fiat Justitia Ruat Caelum “let justice be done though the heavens fall”.
The paragraph records sharply conflicting claims.
The Special Public Prosecutor alleged that accused number 8 had attempted to influence judges at various stages of the proceedings, including the trial court.
In contrast, the defence mounted an aggressive counterattack, accusing the prosecution and the investigating agency of trying to malign the judicial system, even going so far as to level personal allegations against the trial judge, the prosecutor, and investigating officers, claiming bias.
Justice Varghese’s response was neither defensive nor dismissive.
Instead, she chose judicial restraint. By explicitly stating that the court “left all these matters unattended,” she made it clear that the judgment would not be derailed by allegations, counter-allegations, or attempts to shift focus from evidence and law to personalities and motives.
The invocation of Fiat Justitia Ruat Caelum is significant, said a legal expert.
“It signals a conscious decision to rise above the noise, reaffirming that courts exist to decide cases on legal merit, not to referee battles over credibility between prosecution and defence. In doing so, the judge subtly but decisively asserted the independence of the judiciary,” said the expert.
(Edited by Amit Vasudev)
