Kochi: The Crime Branch has submitted to the Judicial First-Class Magistrate Court at Angamaly the details of an earlier confidential statement by a hostile witness in the 2017 actor assault case.
Sagar Vincent, who first gave a statement to the police against actress and entrepreneur Kavya Madhavan later turned hostile while appearing before the trial court.
The subsequent secret statement to the court as per Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) lays down his reasons for becoming an adverse witness.
The Alappuzha native listed the reasons why he backtracked from the earlier statement given to the police during the time of the cross-examination in the court.
As per the first statement given by Sagar to the police, prime accused Pulsar Suni visited "Lakshya", the shop run by his employer Kavya Madhavan, sometime after committing the crime but before his arrest.
Sagar changed this statement later at the court. He later gave a secret statement under Sec 164 to the court, explaining the circumstances that forced him to change the statement.
The Crime Branch also submitted the supplementary chargesheet which was prepared after conducting further probe into the five-year-old case pertaining to the sexual assault of a top actress by a gang who waylaid her car.
Kavya is the wife of actor Dileep who is an accused in the case.
Dileep summoned over defamation suit
The Thalassery First-Class Judicial Magistrate Jangish Narayanan has ordered the appearance of actor Dileep before the court on November 7 in connection with the defamation suit filed by film producer 'Liberty' Basheer four years ago.
While accepting the suit filed by Basheer, the court ordered the issuing of summons to Dileep.
In his statement to the media and in various courts Dileep alleged that he was wrongly implicated in the actor attack case due to a conspiracy by me and others and such claims damaged my reputation, stated Basheer in the defamation suit.
It was also pointed out in the suit that though Basheer sent a legal notice asking Dileep to withdraw the statement he did not receive any reply.
The case came up for hearing four years later as part of the delay in the court proceedings due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
After examining witnesses, the Thalassery court decided on Saturday to send summons to Dileep.
