A day after the Kerala High Court stayed his arrest till Thursday, the actor-producer Vijay Babu who is accused of raping a young actor returned from Dubai.
He arrived at the Cochin International Airport Limited by an Emirates Airlines flight on Wednesday at 8:58 am to a large posse of waiting media persons. His passport was seized by the emigration officials.
Expressing confidence in the court, Mr. Babu said that he will cooperate with the police and that truth will prevail. He is supposed to appear before the Station House Officer of Ernakulam South Police station who is the investigation officer in both the cases registered against him.
“He is supposed to appear before the investigation officer immediately on his arrival. We will interrogate him and depending on how cooperative he is, we will take a call on approaching the court for his arrest,” said C.H. Nagaraju, District Police Chief (Kochi City).
Mr. Babu was originally scheduled to return on Monday and his counsels had even produced his tickets as proof before the High Court. But he abandoned the trip at the last minute. Shortly thereafter, the High Court also postponed the hearing on his anticipatory bail plea scheduled for the day. When the plea was heard on Tuesday, the court stayed his arrest till Thursday,
Mr. Babu was booked for rape on a petition filed by the survivor on April 22 soon after which he had fled the country to Dubai via Bengaluru, Police booked a second case against him on April 27 after he revealed the identity of the survivor in a social media outburst from Dubai.
Since then, the police had issued a lookout notice against him and managed to secure a Blue Corner notice against him by the Interpol. A move to get a Red Corner notice issued, however, didn’t materialize reportedly owing to bureaucratic hassles.
Police had also raided his apartments in the Kochi and been to the hotels where Mr. Babu had been allegedly with the survivor. Police are also collecting evidence about his friends and acquaintances who abetted him to extend his stay abroad besides allegedly trying to influence the survivor to withdraw the petition.
On the receiving end of the wrath of bodies like the Women in Cinema Collective, Mr. Babu had chosen to stay away from the Association of Malayalam Movie Artists till his name was cleared in the cases. In between, his mother had petitioned the chief minister and state police chief alleging a conspiracy by a Kochi-based movie industry clique to malign and defame him.
