The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the acquittal of Peepli Live co-director Mahmood Farooqui in a rape case and dismissed an appeal challenging that verdict, Live Law reported.
In September 2017, the Delhi High Court acquitted Farooqui in a rape case and set aside an earlier verdict of a trial court sentencing him to seven years in jail for allegedly raping a research scholar from the United States. The trial court had also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on him.
The Supreme Court bench of Justices SA Bobde and L Nageswara Rao said, “Such a case is extremely hard to adjudicate. But it has been very well decided by the Delhi High Court.”
The case
The 35-year-old woman, who was in Uttar Pradesh for research work, had told the police that she was assaulted by the filmmaker at his Sukhdev Vihar house in southern Delhi on March 28, 2015. “The woman alleged that Farooqui got drunk at a party and took her to a separate room where he forced himself on her,” an officer had then said. She had returned to the US after the incident, but later approached the Delhi Police through diplomatic channels and lodged a formal complaint on June 19 that year.
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