Producer-actor Vijay Babu moves Kerala HC seeking anticipatory bail in rape case
Kochi, Apr 29: Malayalam movie producer and actor Vijay Babu on Friday moved the Kerala High Court seeking anticipatory bail in the rape case filed against him saying it was an attempt to blackmail him.
Babu has been charged of allegedly sexually assaulting a female actor and disclosing the survivor's identity through a Facebook live session.
"Now the attempt of the de facto complainant is to blackmail the petitioner by simply filing the complaint alleging that the petitioner forcefully sexually assaulted her," Babu said in his plea filed through lawyer S Rajeev.
In his plea, the producer-turned-actor said "the present trend" was that for the sake of publicity anybody can make sexual allegations against anybody to tarnish the image of a person who is having popularity in the society.
"The police are also guided by media reports and they wanted to finish the chapter by arresting the petitioner for the purpose of creating news for the media due to the pressure from media people," Babu said in his plea.
He said he was innocent and was "highly aggrieved" by the one-sided approach of the authorities to make him a "scapegoat for the purpose of news and the media."
Babu, who is reportedly absconding since the police charged him with rape following the woman's complaint, appeared in a Facebook live session and claimed innocence, saying he is the real victim.
As the producer, who is also the founder of the production company Friday Film House, disclosed the survivor's name and identity, which is an offence, another case was also slapped on him.
The woman, who appeared in movies produced by Vijay Babu's production house, lodged a complaint with the police on April 22 and detailed through a Facebook post the physical assault and sexual exploitation she had allegedly suffered at the hands of the producer-actor for the past one and half months.
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Congress using hijab issue to pacify minority anger, alleges Karnataka LoP R Ashoka
Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.
Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.
He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.
Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.
He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.
Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.
He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.
