A Goa court on Thursday charged former Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal with rape, sexual harassment and wrongful restraint, CNN-News18 reported. Tejpal pleaded not guilty to all the charges, ANI quoted his lawyer as saying.
Tejpal is accused of raping a junior colleague in 2013 in a hotel elevator at an annual event organised by Tehelka in Goa. In an an internal email, he had claimed that the incident was a “lapse of judgment”. The Goa Crime Branch had filed a chargesheet in the case in 2014.
On September 7, a court in Goa’s Mapusa decided to frame charges against Tejpal for rape, but Tejpal’s counsel Aman Lekhi had argued that the accusations of rape were false, and that the prosecution had delayed handing the evidence over to him by three years.
On Tuesday, the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court had turned down Tejpal’s plea and allowed the Additional North Goa District and Sessions court to frame charges against him. The High Court, however, said the trial could begin only after it gave its consent.
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