Kochi: The crucial video evidence in the 2017 actress assault case had leaked from the court after nearly two years. This was ascertained in a digital scrutiny carried out on the orders of the Crime Branch investigation team.
The video contains the explicit visuals of the sexual assault of the actress on a moving car that was waylaid by gangsters on February 17, 2017. The very next day on February 18, the main accused N S Sunil Kumar, aka Pulsar Suni, copied the visuals, suspected to be shot on his mobile phone, to the memory card.
The forensic examination report pointed out that the memory card, which contained the visuals, was illegally accessed after it was submitted in court.
Pulsar Suni's advocate had submitted the memory card at the Angamali magistrate court on February 20, 2017.
The memory card, which has been kept in the court's custody, was opened and its files checked for the first time on December 13, 2018. Since then, the memory card had been accessed several times, as per the forensic report.
Investigators were unaware of the report
The prosecution and the probe team were unaware about the existence of such a report for a long while. Curiously, the investigators were in the dark even during the witness examination of the forensic expert who had analysed the memory card.
This report was prepared on January 21, 2020. But the prosecution and the probe officers came to know of this only in February 2022. Still there is no clarity on when the report, prepared in January 2020, was submitted in the trial court.
The Crime Branch Additional Director General of Police (ADGP) has given a directive to find out how this serious lapse happened. It is being checked whether the report was kept in the forensic lab without handing it over to the court or whether it was not communicated to the investigation team that the report has been submitted in court.
