The Goa bench of the Bombay High Court has directed the Mapusa trial court to not allow the lawyers representing the rape-accused Tarun Tejpal to ask ‘irrelevant’ and ‘humiliating’ questions to the survivor.
According to the reports, the victim had filed a petition in the Bombay High Court accusing the counsel of rape-accused Tarun Tejpal of asking her ‘irrelevant’ and ‘humiliating’ questions during the cross-examination.
Following the victim’s complaint, the Bombay HC had reportedly passed an interim order to the Mapusa court to ensure that no irrelevant questions are posed to the victim.
https://twitter.com/prudentgoa/status/1205009814205558787?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The hearing of the case is currently adjourned till 20th December. The cross-examination will restart from next week and likely to continue for the next four days. The cross-examination of the victim had begun on 21 October in an in-camera trial.
The trial, which began in September 2017, was delayed after Tejpal appealed to the Supreme Court pleading the quashing of the charges framed against him. However, the Supreme Court dismissed Tejpal’s plea which sought to quash charges against him. The bench comprising Justice Arun Mishra and Justice MR Shah said that the case against the Tehelka founder-editor would continue.
Tejpal is charged under several sections of the IPC for sexually assaulting his junior colleague inside a lift of a resort hotel in Goa during the magazine’s event. A journalist colleague of Tejpal had accused him of raping her inside an elevator in a Hotel Grand Hyatt, Goa, during Tehelka magazine’s THiNK 2013 festival in Goa on November 7, 2013.
Read: Delay no more! Court orders framing of charges against Tarun Tejpal
The case came to light when a number of media houses published a leaked trail of emails exchanged between the woman, Tejpal and the managing editor of Tehelka, Shoma Chaudhary. This further led Tejpal to step down from his post of editor-in-chief of the media house in November 2013, for six months to ‘recuse’ himself.
Tarun Tejpal, the one-time hero of ‘Liberal-secular’ media industry, has been booked under Sections 376 (rape), 341 (wrongful restraint), 342 (wrongful confinement) 354A (sexual harassment) and 354B (criminal assault) of the Indian Penal Code.