Kasaragod: The Sessions Court here on Friday rejected the anticipatory bail plea of a female actor accused of sexually abusing her minor cousin. She had earlier levelled allegations against seven individuals, including actors Mukesh, Jayasurya, Edavela Babu, and Maniyanpilla Raju, of sexually assaulting her. These actors had accused her of blackmailing them.
On September 25, she filed the anticipatory bail plea in Kasaragod, saying she did not know where Kerala Police had charged her under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. In her petition, filed by Adv Sangeeth Louis, the respondent was named 'Station House Office, Unknown Police Station, Kasaragod'.
The sessions court took up the case on September 30 but scheduled it on Friday after finding that she had not mentioned the police station where the case was registered. On Friday, the court rejected the application due to deficiencies in the petition, said a court official. "Also, no one appeared for her in court," he said.
The actor made several attempts to find out where the POCSO case was registered after her cousin submitted her complaint to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and the State Police Chief in September. She said she shot off RTI queries to all District Police Chiefs in Kerala to find out where the case was registered but did not get a reply.
As a last resort, she filed anticipatory bail pleas in all 14 session courts in Kerala, including Kasaragod and the High Courts of Kerala and Madras.
Her cousin from Muvattupuzha accused her of attempting to sell her as a "sex slave" while she was a minor. The woman had alleged that the actor -- the daughter of her maternal aunt -- 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 ploy 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 Malayalam movie industry. Police have registered separate cases against all the persons she named in her complaint.
