The Kerala High Court on Tuesday dismissed a petition challenging the transfer of ADGP S Sreejith from the post of Crime Branch chief and the supervising officer of the 2017 actress sexual assault case in which popular Malayalam actor Dileep is an accused.
The high court quashed the petition saying it cannot interfere in the state's policy matters. A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice S Manikumar and Justice Shaji P Chaly issued the order after the state
government submitted a report containing the transfer order and information on the new investigation team as directed, legal website LiveLaw reported.
The petitioner, filmmaker Byju Kottarakkara, had submitted that the government had shifted Sreejith from the post with a malafide intention of
saving the actual perpetrators of the crime.
Contesting this, the government had submitted that the order
reconstituting the SIT in the case had only mentioned the name of Sreejith in his capacity as the head of the Crime Branch and as such, when he was transferred to another department, the incumbent officer would assume the charge of supervision of the team.
The high court observed that Section 97 of the Kerala Police Act did not say that the officer who headed an SIT cannot be altered or anything about the posting of a Crime Branch chief.
The survivor-actress in the 2017 case had recently sought the intervention of the Kerala High Court after speculation that there was some attempt to sabotage the case.
There are two cases against Dileep. One is the 2017 actress abduction case in which he is the eighth accused and was in jail for over two months, and the second case was registered in December last year that he has conspired to eliminate the police officers who arrested him.
