Barely visible behind the swarm of television cameras and the long microphones pushed at him, actor Dileep did not look calm. It was the morning of December 8, minutes after a court in Kochi acquitted him of an eight-year-old crime. The court found him not guilty of masterminding the brutal abduction and sexual assault of his female colleague in the summer of 2017. His name had been the eighth on the list of those originally accused.

Dileep, in a white shirt and wearing his beard long, was not the picture of humility that he had always projected himself as. The actor, one of the most powerful in Malayalam cinema, minced no words in his lashing criticism of the police — they were, he said, a gang of criminals concocting false narratives against him. If there was any criminal conspiracy a

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