The prosecution case would go up in smoke if the defense team is able to prove that Dileep was elsewhere under the same mobile phone tower.Thiruvananthapuram: Actor Dileep’s new advocate knows how to tear at the prosecution argument. B Raman Pillai had saved many a CPM leader facing trial in the murder case of T.P. Chandrasekharan by proving alibi - that his clients were elsewhere when the conspiracy was alleged to have taken place.
The prosecution in the murder case had claimed that CPM leader P. Mohanan conspired with the other accused in the case – C.H. Ashokan, K.K. Krishnan and K.C. Ramachandran - at the flower shop run by accused No. 30, Padayankandi Raveendran, at Orakkatteri on April 2, 2012.
All the accused were under the same mobile tower location on the given date and time. The prosecution also produced a witness to the conspiracy. Suresh Babu, the plant operator of the the Vellikulangara milk producers’ society, testified before the court that the accused had hatched a plot to murder Chandrasekharan.
Raman Pillai, however, was ready with his counter arguments. How could his clients be deemed guilty only because they happened to be under the same location as some other people, he wanted to know. The CPM had taken out local marches across Kozhikode district in the run-up to the party congress to be held in the city.
The march in the Orkattery area was held on the day of the alleged conspiracy. Raman Pillai said that his clients had gone to a memorial dedicated to the party’s martyrs on that day and that memorial happened to be close to the flower shop.
The defense counsel also produced photographs of Mohanan and other party leaders attending a function at the memorial. The photos taken by P.M. Bhaskaran of the Kannookkara Geetha Studio were beamed across the court hall. One of them showed senior leader V.V. Dakshinamoorthy handing over a ceremonial torch to Mohanan and Dakshinamoorthy’s watch showed the time at 3:35 pm, the time of the conspiracy, according to the police.
How could his clients be hatching a conspiracy when they were attending a public function, Pillai asked. The court could not buy the prosecution’s arguments. Only K.C. Ramachandran was found guilty. Legal experts think that Pillai’s alibi saved the day for most of the CPM leaders.
Pillai could use the same technique to save Dileep, who is accused of conspiring with criminal to sexually assault a young actress. The police have mainly relied on the location records of Dileep’s and ‘Pulsar’ Suni’s mobile phones to substantiate their theory.
Dileep’s counsel argues that the actor had never met or talked to Suni. The first accused sent a messenger to Dileep’s friend Nadhirshah and driver Appunni to get access to the actor. How could a criminal not know the phone number of the man who hired him? How can Dileep be accused of a conspiracy just because he happened to be at a particular location?
The prosecution case would go up in smoke if the defense team is able to prove that Dileep was elsewhere under the same mobile phone tower. The witnesses could turn hostile anytime.
A lawyer such as Pillai would have little difficulty in turning the feeble case around. The way he argued for his clients in the Chandrasekharan murder case should be a pointer for the police and the prosecution.
The police tried to pinpoint Keermani Manoj, one of the key accused, by claiming that the accused had washed the blood-stained clothes in the washing machine in Manoj’s house after the murder. A forensic examination proved the trace of blood in the machine.
But Pillai was not to back down. The stains could have appeared even if the accused washed their clothes after butchering a chicken or any other animal. Forensic experts said it was likely. They also nodded to Pillai’s claim that the stains could have come from clothes smeared with menstrual blood.
The prosecution has an uphill task in the actress attack case.
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