Kochi: Actor Dileep, who is an accused in the 2017 actress assault case, is found to have destroyed chat history with 12 contacts on his phone. One of them was the Sharjah Cricket Association CEO, states a Crime Branch report.

The probe report, submitted before a court here, also said the chats were erased with the help of cybersecurity expert Sai Shankar and were beyond recovery.

The deleted chats include those with his wife and actress Kavya Madhavan; his brother-in-law Suraj and three Dubai-based people — 'Dhe Puttu' restaurant partner, Thrissur native and social worker and Naseer, a Malappuram native who runs a supermarket in Dubai, the report said.

The Crime Branch also suspects that some of the chats were deleted in a ploy to divert the attention of the probe agency. The report claimed that the removal of these chats raises suspicion over Dileep's role in the case and it needs to conduct further investigation into the matter.

Earlier, the Crime Branch had named Sai Shankar as an accused in the conspiracy case against Dileep, registered after the actor's old friend and director Balachandrakumar disclosed that Dileep had conspired to do away with the police officials probing the 2017 actress assault case.

Sai Shankar was charged for destroying evidences on phones beloging to Dileep and other accused as well as for hiding information from the investigation team.

According to the police, Sai Shankar destroyed the evidence using his wife's iMac system. Sai Shankar had admitted that he had not destroyed the information and had transferred the information to another location. Following this, the Crime Branch filed a report in the Aluva court naming him an accused.

A leading south Indian actress was abducted and sexually assaulted by a gang in 2017 and the crime was filmed to blackmail her. After main accused Sunil was arrested and questioned, Dileep was accused of being the main conspirator in the case and arrested.

Sai Shankar is the sixth accused in the conspiracy case against Dileep.