Kochi: Police have zeroed in on 10 suspects who would have accessed the memory card containing visuals of the sexual assault of a top actress in early 2017. Their Call Detail Records (CDR) are under scrutiny.

These 10 suspects who had the maximum probability of opening the memory card included the employees of the trial court, members of the inquiry team in the actress attack case, lawyers and prosecution team members.

Apart from the CDR, the court will examine the visuals collected from the CCTVs installed in the surroundings of the court to identify the culprits.

Only after verifying the CDR, the suspects will be asked to appear for questioning.

A forensic examination earlier revealed the memory card was accessed on a Vivo mobile phone, having a Jio SIM card, from 12.19 pm to 12.54 pm on July 19, 2021 when the lawyer of the first accused was allowed to view the visuals in the pen drive.

The usual procedure is that the visuals stored in pen drive are shown to the lawyers of the accused. But in this case, the police apprehend that the crime was committed as someone was anxious to see the visuals in the memory card with the aim of knowing whether there was any additional video footage in it which was not there in the pen drive.

According to the police, it did not happen accidentally.

The inquiry team members have been also included in the list of suspects in order to ensure that there should be no prejudice in the investigation.

Trial court order

Trial Court Judge Honey M Varghese has given a directive to the police to find out the accused, who had viewed the visuals contained in the memory card.

Security lapses while bringing the pen drive and memory card to the trial court from the safe custody of the Treasury Department on the day gave the opportunity for someone to view the visuals in the memory card.

There was no need to bring the memory card to the court on that particular day as the lawyer of the first accused was shown the visuals contained in the pen drive. So, the unwanted step of bringing the memory card to the court caused the serious breach of secrecy in the form of leaking of visuals.      

It was the assaulted cine artist who first made the allegation regarding the leaking of visuals contained in the memory card.