Sai Shankar, IT expert arraigned as an accused in a case against actor Dileep and five others for allegedly conspiring to endanger the police officers involved in the actor assault case, surrendered at the Crime Branch (CB) headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram on Friday.
Sai’s arrest was recorded and he was brought to Kochi later in the day. He had gone incommunicado ever since his anticipatory bail plea was dismissed by the Kerala High Court. He came for the surrender from Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh, the police said.
However, the CB officials involved in the investigation said the charges against him were not grave and were bailable. The accused was charged with destruction of evidence for allegedly deleting chats with 12 persons from the mobile phone of Dileep.
Sai is accused of deleting the chats from the mobile using his iMac desktop on January 28 before the phone was surrendered to the court. The investigation officer had filed a report before the Aluva Judicial Magistrate Court invoking Section 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) and Section 204 (destruction of document or electronic record to prevent its production as evidence) of the Indian Penal Code.
On his part, Sai accused the investigators of threatening him to give false statements against the lawyers representing Dileep.
Meanwhile, the CB is in the process of scrutinising the report from the Thiruvananthapuram Forensic Science Laboratory after analysing the mobile phones of Dileep and the other accused. The report covers over 11,161 videos, 11,238 audios clips, over two lakh images and 1,597 documents, as per the CB submission before the High Court.
Published - April 08, 2022 06:13 pm IST
