The Bombay High Court’s Goa bench on Saturday said that certain observations made by the trial court about the complainant’s behaviour need to be revisited in the Tarun Tejpal rape case, Live Law reported. It allowed the Goa government to appeal against the acquittal Tejpal in the case.
A bench comprising Justices MS Sonak and RN Laddha made the statement while rejecting Tejpal’s objection against the state government’s appeal against his acquittal. The justices said that the reasoning in the acquittal order needed thorough scrutiny.
Tejpal, the former editor-in-chief of Tehelka magazine, was accused of raping a junior colleague in an elevator in 2013. A sessions court acquitted Tejpal in the case in May last year.
In her 527-page judgement, Additional Sessions Judge Kshama Joshi noted that Tejpal was granted “benefit of doubt” in the absence of corroborative evidence to support the allegations made by the complainant. The court also said that the complainant did not show the “kind of normative behaviour” expected from her after the alleged assault.
The High Court on Saturday said that evidence such as Tejpal’s messages over phone and email to the complainant needed to be examined again, The Indian Express reported.
“This examination, we believe, is essential for several reasons that need not be elaborated,” the court said. “Based on this evidence, perhaps, some of the learned Additional Sessions Judge inferences about the victim’s conduct may also need a revisit. The inference from the victim’s conduct of consulting some lawyers before lodging her complaint may also require a revisit.”
During the hearing, Tejpal’s counsel Amit Desai said that the Goa government had filed for acquittal even before the complete judgement was available, The Indian Express reported.
The judgement, he added, was filed by an additional public prosecutor and not routed through the public prosecutor as mandated under Section 378 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
“To say that it is such a horrible judgement, I want to file [an appeal] even without waiting for the [full] judgement is casting aspersions on the fairness of the judiciary,” Desai said.
The court said that it could not go over notes and opinions to find out whether the decision of the government to file the appeal was fair.
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