Supreme Court has extended the entitlement of interim anticipant bail by two weeks to the Malayalam actor Siddique in a rape case. An interim anticipant bail is granted when the operation seeking the anticipant bail or regular bail is pending.
The case is listed after two weeks by a Bench headed by Justice Bela Trivedi and Satish Chandra Sharma following a request made by elderly advocate V. Giri, for Mr. Siddique seeking further time to file a response to a Kerala police report seeking his custodial interrogation.
BACKGROUND
Actress Revathy Sampath indicted actor Siddique of sexual exploitation after the Justice Hema Committee report was released exposing women’s wide exploitation in the Malayalam cinema assiduity. According to her, Siddique invited her to a hostel in 2016 on the rationale of meeting about some film systems, where the incident took place. Sections 376 (rape) and 506 (felonious intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code formed the base of her First Information Report (FIR) against him in 2024.
Mr. Siddique was on a lookout notice until he was granted an interim bail.
The Supreme Court on September 30 granted Siddique two weeks of temporary anticipant bail, with a rider he has to cooperate in the discourse. Backed by worries over Siddique’s profile in the sector, fears about his capacity to abolish substantiation if left free, and the lack of cooperation by him with investigators, the Kerala police opposed this bail. They refocused out that there was formerly substantial substantiation against him from the ongoing inquiry.
The High Court also held that the acts contended against Siddique would come within the dimension of the expanded description of “rape.”
Senior advocate Ranjit Kumar said that Mr. Siddique was unintentional to share with the Special disquisition platoon, which is probing over 30 FIRs registered across Kerala after the release of the Justice Hema Commission report lifted the robe of rampant sexual assault going on in the Malayalam assiduity.
The bench also questioned why there was a detention of eight times by the indicted to which Senior Advocate Ranjit Kumar replied that it took a great deal of courage by the victim to come through. He also said that she’s formerly laboriously posting about the incident from 2018 on Facebook, and has felt that since power dynamics were against her, nothing would believe her. Also, he closed his Facebook account to hamper the disquisition, but she got the courage to file a police complaint after the release of the Justice Hema commission report.
The police said that the victim was extremely scarred after the incident and we have a cache of substantiation against the actor which can be used before the actor goes down in history as an idol. They also mentioned that Siddique’s participation in the treatise has been limited to only saying that he doesn’t flash back, giving vague answers knowing that he’s under the protection of interim bail, and destroying the substantiation by closing his Facebook account is also not making the situation anymore.
Case: SIDDIQUE v. STATE OF KERALA AND ANR SLP(Crl) No.13463/2024
