Court to deliver verdict in actor Dileep rape case on December 8

After a prolonged trial that lasted for almost eight years, a trial court in Kochi will pronounce its judgment in the sensational actor Dileep’s rape case on Monday (December 8, 2025).

Honey M. Varghese, the Ernakulam Principal Sessions Judge, is expected to pronounce the judgment in the case at around 11 a.m. on the day.

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The case had attracted wide attention as a young woman actor was allegedly abducted and raped inside a moving car, and actor Dileep was arraigned as an accused in the case.

The charge against Mr. Dileep is that he conspired with N.S. Sunil, aka Pulsur Suni, on three occasions to humiliate the survivor and suggested filming the obscene scenes and sexual acts of the actress, and offered ₹1.5 crore for the job.

Martin Antony (second accused), B. Manikandan (third accused), V. P. Vijeesh (fourth accused), H. Salim (fifth accused), Pradeep (sixth accused), Charley Thomas (seventh accused), Sanilkumar (ninth accused) and Sarath G. Nair (fifteenth accused) are the other accused in the case.

The prosecution contended that the first six accused were directly involved in the crime, while the seventh accused, Charley, harboured the accused, and the ninth accused conspired with the first accused to connect him to Dileep. Sarath G. Nair, a friend of Mr. Dileep, has been accused of destroying evidence in the case.

While three other accused had turned approvers, two lawyers, to whom Pulsur Suni had reportedly handed over the mobile phone in which the visuals of the rape were recorded, were later acquitted in the case. However, the police could not recover the mobile phone, a crucial piece of evidence in the case, even after intense searches in various places, including the Kochi backwaters.

The court had considered around 1600 documents and examined 280 witnesses.

Mr. Dileep was incarcerated for 84 days in the case. Most of the accused had already served around six and a half years in jail before being released on bail. Sanilkumar, an accused in a case related to the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, is still behind bars.

Though the trial in the case began in 2018, it was disrupted for around four years for various reasons. While two years were lost following the COVID-19-induced lockdown, the further investigation following the alleged revelations of filmmaker Balachandrakumar took one year to complete.

The resignation of two Special Prosecutors and the time the government took to appoint new ones contributed to the delay. On her part, the survivor, who had sought a woman judge to consider the case, unsuccessfully petitioned the Supreme Court twice for the removal of the woman judge, which in turn delayed the proceedings.

Moreover, the prosecution, the accused, and the survivor together filed around 100 appeals against various orders of the trial court. In some instances, the appeals reached the Supreme Court, which also delayed the judicial process.

The reported unauthorised access of the memory card in which the visuals of the alleged rape were recorded while it was in the custody of the court had also triggered fresh legal battles. As many as 28 prosecution witnesses, including actors Bhama, Edavela Babu, Bindu Panicker and Sidhique, reportedly turned hostile.