Malayalam film actor Siddique on Wednesday moved the Supreme Court challenging the Kerala High Court order denying him anticipatory bail in a rape case.According to the Supreme Court website, Siddique has moved the apex court through his counsel Ranjeeta Rohatgi.
The high court on Tuesday rejected the anticipatory bail plea of Siddique in a rape case against him, saying that in view of the seriousness of the accusations he was facing, his custodial interrogation was inevitable for proper investigation of the crime.
It said since Siddique’s defence was “a total denial of the incident”, his potency test was yet to be conducted and there being a “reasonable apprehension” that he may intimidate witnesses and tamper with evidence, “it was not a fit case to exercise the discretionary powers of the court” to grant him the relief.
The high court, however, made it clear that observations made by it in the order shall not be construed as an expression of the merits of the case.
Siddique, who was booked for offences under sections 376 (rape) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC, has claimed in his plea that the complainant female actor had subjected him to a “prolonged campaign of harassment and false accusations since 2019”.
In his anticipatory bail plea before the high court, he had claimed that she had repeatedly, for the past five years, made unsubstantiated and false claims of sexual misbehaviour and “verbal sexual offers” by him in a theatre in 2016.
“But now she has raised totally contradictory allegation of more serious crime of rape at a different place in the same year,” he had said in his plea.