Malayalam actor Dileep had denied knowing the actress

Kochi: Ending the suspense over the conspiracy behind the abduction and sexual assault of a female actor in February, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) on Monday arrested prominent Malayalam actor Dileep.

Earlier, the actor had denied knowing the key accused which made the cops suspicious. Hence, they questioned everyone connected with the actor for over a week.

The probe revealed that Dileep had a fallout with the actress back in 2013 and it was in the second attempt that the gang led by Suni succeeded in attacking her in a moving car on the night of February 17.

For a major part of the probe, the cops were searching in the dark and at one stage had even filed a chargesheet in the case saying there was no proof of any conspiracy. 

However, the turnaround came when a co-prisoner of Suni told the police that the latter had contacted Dileep from  the jail by making calls to Nadirshah and manager Appunni. A letter reportedly written at the behest of Suni from the Kakkanad district jail asking for money from Dileep too surfaced in which it was mentioned that the memory card used to record the visuals of the attack on the actress was handed over to someone at the online apparel store in Kakkanad, owned by his wife and actress Kavya Madhavan. 

Dileep too suddenly came out claiming that he had received a blackmailing letter threatening to “link” him with the case.

This was enough for the cops to go in full steam in probing the conspiracy angle, starting with the actress’ claim that she was deliberately kept out of  certain films at the behest of certain persons from the film field itself.

On April 18, the cops submitted the chargesheet against seven persons who had direct role in the attack with Sunil Kumar Surendran aka Pulsar Suni arraigned as the first accused.