Days after his acquittal in the actor abduction and assault case, Dileep's film Bha Bha Ba hit theatres to much fanfare, as well as some criticism towards the film from a purely artistic perspective and for the controversies surrounding its lead actor. The film is rife with moments that seem like references to Dileep's own life after the emergence of the case that remind the viewer of his career trajectory. The film's plot involves a powerful character's kidnapping by Dileep's protagonist. At one point, Dhyan Sreenivasan's character says that the protagonist is known for his kidnappings as he talks about the latter's legendary 'exploits,' one where he kidnapped 'Ramani'. The narration is juxtaposed with a lewd joke, which ends with the punchline that Ramani is a cow and not what one thought it would be. Critics argue that it intentionally makes the audience mistake a cow for a woman just so it can make a lewd joke, at the same time as implying that Dileep is the wrongly accused.

Netizens have been criticising the scene for its apparent resemblance to the actor abduction and assault case. Some have also pointed the criticism towards the film's director Dhananjay Shankar and writers Fahim Safar and Noorin Sheriff for allowing the references to be part of the film.

For the uninitiated, Dileep was the eight accused in the case and allegedly ordered the first accused, Pulsar Suni, to kidnap and sexually assault the survivor. Bha Bha Ba is not the first Dileep film to have apparent callbacks to the actor's real life. In many of his films, Dileep played characters who either committed a crime and concealed it, while in others, his characters are wrongly accused of something they did not do. The trends have been around from the days of Saamoohya Paadam (1996) to Ramaleela (2017) and many films in between.