The State government on Friday supported before the High Court the plea for a change of trial court by the survivor in the case relating to the sexual assault on a woman actor in which actor Dileep is one of the accused.
When the petition filed by the survivor came up before Justice V.G. Arun, Senior Public Prosecutor Suman Chakravarthy submitted that a fair trial in the case would not be possible before the Additional Special Sessions Judge. In fact, during the trial, the Special Prosecutor appointed to conduct the trial had suffered extreme difficulties to proceed with the trial owing to the hostile and partisan attitude of the Sessions Court.
Norm violation
The survivor was harassed during the trial by the counsel of the accused and the trial court did not prevent the counsel from asking defamatory questions to the survivor. The court had violated the in-camera proceedings norms by allowing around 20 lawyers inside the court during the examination of the survivor. He added that the prosecution was not in a position to conduct the trial before the court as the conduct of the court was biased, which was detrimental to the interest of the judicial system as well as the survivor.
The survivor was constantly under pressure and humiliation at the trial court by the repeated questions in different ways even after giving proper answers. During the trial, the court often commented that there was no importance in this case, forgetting the fact that this was a rarest of rare case as the survivor had to watch the visuals of rape committed on her and identify it by her during the examination, the government said.
The Senior Government Prosecutor further submitted that a copy of the Central Forensic Science Laboratory report was handed over to the counsel of the eighth accused (actor Dileep) on a day when the case was not listed for the trial, without notice to the prosecution.
He pointed out that there were as many as 359 prosecution witnesses, of which 80 were examined. In fact, the prosecution was ready to produce the details of the incidents that took place inside the courtroom, including the verbatim reproduction of the observations made by the court. The court adjourned to November 2 the hearing on the petitions.
