Fearing arrest, Kavya Madhavan, movie actress and wife of superstar Dileep, who is presently in jail under judicial custody for the alleged conspiracy behind the brutal attack on a leading actress in February, on Saturday approached the Kerala High Court for anticipatory bail plea even as hearing of arguments over Dileep’s bail ended in a court in Angamaly near Kochi.
Kavya is the second person to seek anticipatory bail in the case within a week. Dileep’s close friend, actor-director Nadir Shah, has already filed a similar plea in the High Court which is expected to take up both the applications on Monday. The Angamaly court will issue its order on Dileep’s bail plea on Monday.
This was Dileep’s fourth bail plea since his arrest on July 10.Kavya, Dileep’s second and present wife, filed the application for anticipatory bail in the High Court through senior lawyer B Raman Pillai.
stating that she suspected that the police were preparing to arrest her. Praying for urgent consideration of the plea, she said that she had been cooperating with the police in the investigation. Pillai is the counsel for Dileep also.
In the bail plea, Kavya said she had nothing to do with the case and alleged that the police were planning to make her an accused. She accused the special police team probing the conspiracy behind the attack on the actress of forcing her to say and do illegal things and that they were threatening to trap her in the case if she refused to comply with their instructions.
Alleging that the police had been weaving stories in order to connect her with the case, Kavya said they had also been trying to intimidate her over the phone. The police’s effort was to establish that Sunil Kumar alias Pulsar Suni, first accused in the case, had worked as her driver earlier, she said, adding that neither she nor Dileep had any connection with Suni.
The police have found that Suni had arrived at laksyah, a garment showroom Kavya has been running at Kakkanad, Kochi, after the attack on the actress. Also, there are unconfirmed reports that Suni had told the police that he had received Rs 25,000 from Kavya. The police have already questioned Kavya twice and her mother Shyamala once.
Dileep married Kavya, already a divorcee, last November after he got legally separated from his first wife, actress-dancer Manju Warrier, in 2015. According to the police, Dileep had given a ‘quotation’ to Suni to attack the young actress as an act of revenge against her allegedly for causing problems in the relationship between him and Manju.
The young Kerala actress, who has also been active in other South Indian film industries, was attacked by a gang led by Suni in a moving car on the night of February 17 when she was on her way to Kochi from Thrissur. Suni and some of his associates were arrested within a week of the incident and the first chargesheet in the case was filed subsequently.
Meanwhile, Dileep argued in the First Class Judicial Magistrate Court in Angamaly that he now deserved bail naturally as the 60 days of his custody, maximum permissible in the case as he had been charged only with issuing instructions to record the images of the actress in nude, an offence that could invite punishment of up to ten years’ imprisonment only.
The Angamaly court had once and the High Court had twice rejected his bail applications earlier pointing out that there was evidence that prima facie established his role in the conspiracy behind the attack on the actress. The police have slapped 13 serious charges on Dileep, presently eleventh accused in the case, including gang rape, criminal conspiracy and abduction.
Opposing Dileep’s arguments through a report submitted in the court on Saturday, the Prosecution said that Dileep had not merely asked Pulsar Suni to record images of the actress in nude but he had issued clear instructions to the first accused to attack her brutally. The court also extended Dileep’s remand period by 14 more days.