Kerala actor attack arrest soon

Kochi: Over four months after a prominent actor was allegedly abducted and sexually assaulted near here, the special investigation team (SIT) probing the case has finally managed to dig out incriminating evidence in the form of phone call records that point towards a well-knit conspiracy from within the film field. However, the top police brass on Monday delayed effecting further arrests in the case, including that of an actor-director, the manager of a prominent actor and the mother of an actress. Sources said the cops were in the process of knitting together various incidents and motives behind the conspiracy and the execution of the attack on the actor on February 17.

“The probe is progressing in the right direction,” said state police chief Loknath Behera, who later in the day joined probe team head ADGP Dinendra Kashyap in Kochi. “Conspiracy is one of the most difficult parts to probe. The last two days, we’ve done something (major in this regard).” So far the probe was limited to main accused Sunil Kumar aka Pulsar Suni and six aides. However, the cops collected the calls records of Suni from November 23 last and found that he frequently rung up four numbers, suspected to be that of a single person. The probe based on tower locations further found that a call was made to Appunni, manager of actor Dileep, from the numbers soon after.

Cops zeroed in on these numbers by examining the phones and SIM cards of people having links with the actor and his filmmaker friend and collecting the call-records with regard to a total of 26 numbers. Also, the sources said, the probe team found that Suni had contacted filmmaker Nadirshah over phone from the jail on at least three occasions with one call lasting as much as eight minutes. However, the filmmaker failed to give a satisfactory answer when asked about this during the marathon interrogation at the Aluva police club recently.

Sources said a confession statement given by Jinson, who shared the same cell with Suni and nine others at the Kakkanad prison, given before the Aluva magistrate also corroborated the findings. Jinson reportedly said he heard Suni ringing up Nadirshah and Appunni and talked about “reward sum”. Also he revealed he heard Suni mentioning about handing over a memory card, suspected to have the recordings of the attack, to an apparel shop at Kakkanad, managed by Shyamala, mother of actor Kavya Madhavan. The sources said the cops would again interrogate all the suspects in the next two days before moving to arrests.