After Sreelekha IPS's video on Dileep, allegations of false cases by official emerge

At least three people have alleged that retired IPS official R Sreelekha has filed false cases against them because of personal grudge. The allegations surfaced a day after she released a video in support of Dileep, the alleged mastermind of the 2017 actor assault case of Kerala. Pointing fingers at the police team who investigated the case, Sreelekha called all the evidence false and fabricated. TNM has debunked some of her claims in this story. The video by Sreelekha has led to people posting their personal experiences with Sreelekha while she served as a police officer.

Bindhu Ammini, the activist known for her Sabarimala entry, posted on Facebook that Sreelekha had filed a false case against her when she was only 18, accusing her of beating up a neighbour. Elaborating on this, women’s rights activist and lawyer PV Vijayamma said how Sreelekha has strung together a series of false cases against her and Bindhu because of an incident of 1996 when they approached her for a case. It concerned the death of a 14-year old girl, whose body was found inside a well. 

In an interview that Vijayamma gave Mathrubhumi, she says that Bindhu and another advocate had accompanied her to visit Sreelekha, who they thought would be women-friendly seeing the kind of articles she wrote. Bindhu had at the time been physically assaulted by someone and complained that the police had not been ready to lodge a case against the attacker. Vijayamma says that while Sreelekha agreed to take care of Bindhu’s case, she spoke very derogatorily of the 14-year-old who was found dead in the well. Sreelekha accused her and her mother of being immoral and said that the girl died by suicide when people came to know about it, Vijayamma says. This led to an exchange of words between them when Vijayamma questioned Sreelekha’s allegations, pointing out that the postmortem report made no such suggestions. She said that Sreelekha was anti-woman.

Vijayamma says that Sreelekha, made a number of charges against her, all of which were proven wrong and for which she was eventually acquitted by the court. But even after her acquittal Sreelekha wrote about it in a magazine, alleging that she had hit Vijayamma and that the then Chief Minister EK Nayanar had laughed when she told him.

Vijayamma says that the original case was that she hit Sreelekha, but by the time the magazine story came, the roles were reversed. However, Sreelekha had mentioned no names, so no defamation suits were filed. 

Vijayamma adds that because she was a lawyer, she and the other lawyer with her were not troubled with many cases but it was not the same story for Bindhu Ammini.

A third story of a false case allegedly filed by Sreelekha because of previous grudge came from human rights activist Jomon Puthenpurackal, who has also included a chapter in his book Daivathinte Swantham Vakeel on how Sreelekha was good at cooking up stories. In the chapter he has recalled that the former DIG of police wrote an article in the Malayalam magazine Vanitha saying that she did not arrest a woman who had killed her baby, born outside wedlock. The IPS officer wrote that she decided not to arrest the woman, who killed her newborn, as she had a family. The officer then wrote in the article that the dead baby already had a heart disease and so he wouldn’t have survived for a long time even if he was not killed. She wrote that she closed the case concluding it “undetected”. The article was written in 2005. It was Jomon Puthenpurackal who complained to then DGP TP Senkumar seeking enquiry in the case. He also sought action against the officer who acted against the law. 

“Following which the DGP ordered the police chiefs of Pathanamthitta and Alappuzha and DySP of Cherthala to probe whether any such case was registered during Sreelekha’s time. Though Sreelekha first claimed that her writings were her service experience, later she gave an explanation that it was a literary imaginative story,” Jomon said in his book. 

Jomon also recalled how he followed the issue by giving complaints. He also alleged that a false case was filed against him by Sreelekha’s mother three years after the incident, because of this.