While citing that the conduct of trial court is highly biased and detrimental to the entire judicial system, the trial in a Kerala actor abduction and assault case was temporarily stalled after the prosecution moved an application in the special court of Kochi, seeking to shift the case to another court.
On Friday, the prosecution in the actor attack case filed a petition in the trial court seeking to stop proceedings of the trial providing an opportunity to the prosecution to approach the High Court to transfer the trial of the case from this court to any other court alleging the trial court to be biased.
The petition filed by a Special Public Prosecutor, A Suresan stated that “Court had made certain remarks and allegations against Prosecution and against the Special Public Prosecutor. When the Prosecutor tried to ascertain, this court again made derogatory remarks and comments against the Special Public Prosecutor.”
“The prosecution believes that justice will be denied to the victim if this case is tried before this court. The prosecution honestly believes that the prosecution, as well as the victim, will not get fair trial and justice from this court,” the petitioner stated in an application under Section 309 of the Code of Criminal Procedure seeking to postpone the ongoing trial proceedings.
Further, the petition asserted, “The conduct of this Court is highly biased, which is detrimental to the judicial system and to the entire prosecution. If the petition is not allowed, the prosecution will be put to great hardship and irreparable injury. The court may be pleased to allow this petition and order stop proceedings of the trial of the case providing an opportunity to the prosecution to approach the High Court to transfer the trial of the case from this court to any other court.”
The case pertains to an incident that took place on the night of 17th February 2017 when a 31-year-old woman actor who has worked in Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu films, was returning after a shooting assignment when she was abducted and allegedly molested inside her car by a group of men. There were 10 accused in the case. The accused filmed the incident and threatened to release it if she approached the police.
During the attack, the main accused Pulsar Suni, involved in many criminal cases, had reportedly told the victim that he was given a “supari (contract crime)” and was forced to do this. After the actor’s complaint, police arrested all accused who were directly involved in the crime. Since there were strong speculations that they carried out the sexual assault at the behest of someone, after six months, the Special Investigation Team had arrested Dileep in July 2017 alleging that he was the mastermind of the crime.
After 88 days of custody, the High Court granted him bail. On the other hand, the prosecution recently filed an application seeking cancellation of his bail stating that he was influencing and intimidating the witnesses in the case. The prosecution and victim were upset after many witnesses turned hostile during the trial. As per sources, at least eight witnesses in the case have turned hostile so far.
In March 2020, the trial court had passed a gag order prohibiting the media reportage of the proceedings in the in-camera trial in the case. However, the court had allowed the reporting of matters as permitted by the Nipun Saxena judgment of the Supreme Court in 2017.
Thus, the present plea states that “The prosecution intends to approach the honorable High Court for transfer of the trial of this case from this Honourable Court to any other court. Therefore, it is humbly submitted that the prosecution is not in a position to conduct the trial of the above case before this court on the above grounds and also on several other grounds which are not to be mentioned here to protect the interests of justice.”
