KOCHI: Sai Sankar, a cyber expert and seventh accused in the case related to the conspiracy hatched to kill the police officers who had probed the actor abduction and rape case, surrendered before the crime branch on Friday. Sai who had absconded after his anticipatory bail was dismissed by the Kerala High Court surrendered at the crime branch headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram.
After recording his arrest, Sai was brought to the CB office in Kalamassery. Sai has been charged with destruction of evidence after he allegedly deleted 12 chat messages from the mobile phone of actor Dileep who is the first accused in the case.
It was on January 28 that Sai reached Kochi and, using his iMac desktop, he deleted the chat messages from Dileep’s mobile phone before it was surrendered at the court as part of the investigation. Sai had alleged that investigation officers were threatening him to give a false statement against Dileep’s lawyers. According to officials, Sai reached Thiruvananthapuram from Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh.
The soft copy of the Forensic Science Lab (FSL) report after analysing the mobile phones of Dileep and other accused persons contains 11,161 videos, 11,238 audio clips, over two lakh images and 1,597 documents.
Meanwhile, the probe team probing the actor abduction and rape case has sent the memory card containing visuals of the sexual assault incident to the FSL to find out the dates on which the files were accessed when it was in the custody of the court. The team has found that the last access date of the visuals changed from February 18, 2017, to December 13, 2018.
During this period, the memory card was in the custody of Ernakulam Principal Sessions Court as evidence in the case. These visuals were accessed several times during the period. The probe team has received permission from the court to question the custodian and other staff at the court in this regard.
Destruction of evidence
On January 28, Sai reached Kochi and, using his iMac desktop, deleted 12 chat messages from Dileep’s mobile phone before it was surrendered at the court. Sai has been charged with destruction of evidence