The Supreme Court on Friday refused to suspend the 10-year sentence passed by the Goa bench of the Bombay high court to journalist Tarun Tejpal in a 2013 rape case.
The court agreed to hear his appeal challenging the Bombay HC order passed in August convicting him in the 2013 incident.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta appearing for the Goa government rebutted Tejpal’s arguments by showing the court messages exchanged between the accused and the victim in which he apologised to the victim. He pointed out that the high court took note of this fact and commented on the manner of the trial in this case. He was prosecuted under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), including provisions relating to rape and assault or criminal force against a woman. the high court relied on the victim’s testimony and accompanying evidence While overturning the acquittal.
The trial court gave a clean chit to the 63-year old journalist in 2021.
During the hearing, senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Siddharth Agarwal representing Tejpal sought to demolish the prosecution story by projecting the victim’s story of alleged rape to be “false”. Mehta said that besides the employer-employee relationship, the victim was the daughter of the accused’s friend and was also friends with Tejpal’s daughter. The court noted this fact and said, “So according to you, there was no motive for the victim to implicate the accused. Mehta said that the trial court conducted the proceedings in a manner that put the victim on trial where she was asked all sorts of uncomfortable questions. However, the high court termed the trial court’s judgment “perverse”.
A bench of justices MM Sundresh and PB Varale passed the order while hearing Tejpal’s appeal challenging the conviction and 10-year sentence passed by the Goa bench of the Bombay high court in a case where he had been acquitted by the trial court in Goa.
