Panaji: Thirteen years after the assault, the Bombay high court on Thursday convicted former Tehelka editor-in-chief Tarun Tejpal of raping a colleague in a Goa hotel elevator, overturning his 2021 acquittal and sentencing him to 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment.A division bench of Justices Neela Gokhale and Amit Jamsandekar granted Tejpal four weeks to surrender after allowing the state’s appeal against his acquittal.The HC held that the survivor made “truthful statements” and that “the prosecution has established the case against the respondent beyond every reasonable doubt”. It described her testimony as “quite natural, inspires confidence and merits acceptance”, adding that “there is nothing that creates any doubt, disbelief or suspicion about the evidence of the survivor”.The HC tore through the trial’s court judgement and manner in which it permitted conduct of trial, ignoring binding Supreme Court guidelines on assessing sexual assault evidence and called the trial court’s findings “directly contrary to evidence on record and thus per say perverse”.The trial court fell in error acquitting Tejpal of all charges levelled against him, it observed. “The appreciation of evidence by the trial court is not only unreasonable but perverse. The conclusions arrived at by the trial court are untenable and, in the established facts and circumstances of the case, the view expressed by it is not a possible view” the bench held.It observed that “rather than evaluating the sterling case presented by the prosecution with the requisite judicial sobriety, the trial court resorted to hyper-technicalities” and “unjustifiably granted the benefit of doubt to the respondent where none reasonably existed”.The HC said the trial court “permitted an invasive, humiliating cross-examination into the victim’s past sexual history, moral views and personal WhatsApp messages”, despite statutory provisions prohibiting such questioning. It added that the trial court was “influenced by extraneous, inadmissible material” and used it “to censure her character and discredit her evidence”.“The trial court appears to be influenced by extraneous, inadmissible material and testimony, including graphic details of the victim’s past sexual history which are prohibited by law and used to censure her character and discredit her evidence”.The bench further held that the trial court relied on stereotypical assumptions about how an “ideal” survivor should behave. It wrongly drew adverse inferences from the absence of visible injuries, the survivor’s inability to access a seven-year-old email account, her failure to physically resist in a particular manner and even “her smiling demeanour during subsequent work events”.The trial court erred in observing that there was no whisper of admission of sexual assault or any of its attributes in the apology e-mails. “The apology e-mails in fact, clearly relate to an ‘encounter’, ‘sexual liaison’ and ‘furtive acts’, in respect of which the Respondent issued two apologies- one formal and the other personal. Without any substantive material, the trial court has believed the apologies to be given under pressure,” the court held, adding that additionally the trial court misapplied legal principles and misread key evidence to favour the defence.“It wrongly disregarded the clear admissions of guilt in the respondent’s apology-emails, misclassifying them as unprompted disclosure statements under Section 27 of the IEA or assuming they were sent under pressure, while relying on heresay testimony and improperly weighing defence witnesses over consistent prosecution witnesses”.After being convicted, Tejpal, 62, told the court he was a “political victim” and sought leniency, citing his age, family responsibilities and clean record. His counsel, senior advocate Aabad Ponda, urged the court to impose the minimum sentence. In 2014, Tejpal had been charged under the stringent post-Nirbhaya anti-rape law for allegedly sexually assaulting a journalist working for his magazine.Appearing for Goa govt, solicitor general Tushar Mehta sought the maximum sentence, arguing that this was not some “misunderstanding or some banter” and Tejpal showed no remorse and repeated the offence despite the survivor’s resistance.Mehta further argued that the survivor’s mature conduct after the incident had been wrongly portrayed as that of someone who had enjoyed the molestation. “No means no. You may be whosoever you are, but when a girl says no, it means no,” Mehta submitted, urging the court to send a strong deterrent message.The HC also underscored the lasting impact of workplace sexual assault, observing that it causes “significant and enduring harm to a woman’s career path”, while “a widespread culture of victim blaming and institutional resistance isolates survivors”. Referring to the complainant, it noted: “She was compelled to resign. She also suffered profound embarrassment during trial.”
