Female actor facing POCSO charges suspects case registered in Kasaragod, files for pre-arrest bail

Kasaragod: The female actor who filed a sexual assault complaint against seven individuals, including actors Mukesh, Jayasurya, Edavela Babu, and Maniyanpilla Raju, sought anticipatory bail from the Kasaragod Sessions Court on Wednesday. The actor also moved the High Court for bail.

This comes after her cousin from Muvattupuzha accused her of attempting to sell her as a "sex slave" while she was a minor. The cousin came forward with the complaint after the actor made a series of allegations against the four male actors and three others in the Malayalam film industry.

The actor filed her anticipatory bail petition in Kasaragod, suspecting that the police in Kasaragod might have registered the FIR against her under various sections of the stringent Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, based on her cousin's complaint. She made several attempts to know where the case had been registered after her cousin submitted her complaint to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and the State Police Chief last week.

She shot off RTI queries to all District Police Chiefs in Kerala to know where the case was registered but did not get any reply.

However, her bail petition has named the Station House Officer of an "unknown police station" in Kasaragod as respondent, a court official told Onmanorama. The petition was filed through Adv Sangeeth Louis, who is registered in Karnataka, he said.
The court has scheduled the next hearing on September 30.

The cousin had alleged that the actor -- her mother's sister's daughter -- was part of a sex mafia and took her to Chennai when she was a minor by promising to find her roles in movies. But once there, the actor presented her before a group and asked her to "compromise".

The actor, however, said that the complaint filed by her cousin was part of a political plot to prevent more people from coming forward to testify in the wake of the Hema Committee report. She said she took the girl to Chennai in 2014 because she expressed an interest in acting and she merely explained the ways of cinema to her.

In a Facebook post at the end of August, the actor said she was verbally and physically abused by the seven persons, which forced her to quit the movie industry. Police have registered separate cases against all the persons she named in her complaint.