The Kerala High Court on Tuesday rejected Malayalam actor Dileep’s petition seeking to quash the first information report against him in the case related to the alleged conspiracy to murder officers who investigated the 2017 actor sexual assault case, Bar and Bench reported.

Justice Ziyad Rahman AA gave the verdict after hearing all parties over three days, Live Law reported.

On February 17, 2017, an actor was allegedly kidnapped and sexually abused inside her car for two hours. There are 10 accused persons in the case and initially the police arrested seven people. Dileep was also arrested subsequently but later released on bail. The accused persons had reportedly filmed the assault to blackmail the woman.

In January, filmmaker Balachandrakumar had released a purported audio clip in which Dileep could be heard asking some persons to “wait to see how the five investigating officers are going to suffer”. Another person is reportedly heard saying that if a “truck is hitting Baiju Poulose [the police officer who investigated the sexual assault case], we would have to see another Rs 1.50 crore”.

The Kerala Police had then registered another first information report against Dileep for allegedly conspiring to kill the investigating officers.

At Tuesday’s hearing, the High Court gave Crime Branch an extension till May 30 to complete its investigation in the sexual assault case, PTI reported. On March 8, the court had given the Crime Branch time till April 15.

The court decided to grant more time after hearing the police’s application.

However, it pulled up the Crime Branch for making contents of its application available to the print media before it reached the court, PTI reported.

“It is unfortunate that the general public came to know about the contents of the application even before the court saw it,” the judge said. “You [Director General of Prosecution] check it up. Find out how that happened.”

The court directed the police to not disclose contents of the application related to the case to anyone, including the media.

It asked Director General of Prosecution TA Shaji to ensure this directive was “honoured in letter and in spirit”, PTI reported.

The hearings

In his petition seeking to quash the investigation in the sexual assault case, Dileep contended that further investigation was not permissible as a final report had been filed in the matter in November 2017 and charges were framed in January 2020. The actor had claimed that the police were carrying out “a series of vindictive acts” under the garb of inquiry.

He had argued that the investigating agency had fabricated evidence against him as they could not produce any material in the sexual assault case.

Dileep had alleged that Paulose had hired Balachandrakumar to depose on the purported audio clip and then invented false stories after he realised that the trial in the case was not going in his favour.

In his plea, the actor said that there was no material in the FIR to corroborate the murder conspiracy, PTI reported. The entire case, he argued, was based on something allegedly “wished” by him.

However, the prosecution had argued that the accused persons had deleted large chunks of data from phones after the High Court had issued a directive to surrender it.

The Crime Branch said that the “alleged utterances by the accused of threatening to harm the officials indicated what was in their mind”, reported PTI.

The prosecution also said that Balachandrakumar was able to record only some bits and pieces of the utterances by the accused, while much more was said and done by them.