Kerala HC stays Sunny Leone's arrest in cheating case

A bench of the Kerala High Court on Wednesday gave relief to Bollywood actor Sunny Leone and two of her close aides from being arrested on a complaint filed by an event manager in Kochi in an alleged cheating case.

The court asked the Crime Branch wing of the Kerala Police probing the case not to arrest the three till they are served notices as per the criminal procedures.

Early this month in the state capital, Sunny was questioned by the Kerala Police at a private resort in the same case, where she explained the entire sequence of events and claimed she had done no wrong.

R. Shiyas who conducts events in and around Kochi had filed a complaint with the Kerala DGP that Sunny Leone had taken Rs 29 lakh from him while promising to attend various inaugural functions in the state but failed to do so.

The complainant said that her manager had taken money in several installments from 2016 onwards, promising to attend five functions. But the same did not happen and he, subsequently, complained to the police.

According to her, while admitting that her manager had taken the money and she had given dates several times, the event manager could not comply with her dates and, hence the issue arose.

Speaking about the same, Sunny had said, "As an artist, work is worship for me. I was nothing but gracious, understanding even moving my schedule multiple times over the organisers. But they wouldn't commit to a set date. It is customary that to lock an actor's time, an advance has to be paid upfront, which wasn't done till the nth hour."

Sunny is currently in Thiruvananthapuram district, where she is shooting for the new season of "MTV Splitsvilla". With the relief from the court, Sunny Leone and her associates will have to cooperate with the police probe team.