Sexual assault case: SC to hear Tarun Tejpal's plea for in-camera hearing today

New Delhi, Jan 24: Supreme Court on Monday will hear the appeal of journalist Tarun Tejpal against the Bombay High Court's order rejecting his plea for an in-camera hearing of the proceedings challenging his acquittal in a 2013 rape case.

On Jan 21, the apex court Judge Justice L Nageswara Rao had recused himself from hearing the appeal of journalist Tarun Tejpal in the 2013 sexual assault case.

"I recuse as at some stage in 2016, I had appeared for state of Goa in the matter. Let it be listed in some other court next week, said Justice Rao, who was sitting with Justice B R Gavai on the bench.

The bench was to hear the plea of Tejpal whose application for conducting an in-camera hearing of the proceedings under section 327 of the CrPC was rejected by the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court on November 24, last year.

The acquittal of the former editor-in-chief of Tehelka magazine, who was accused of sexually assaulting his then-woman colleague in the lift of a five-star hotel in Goa in November 2013, by a sessions court in May 2021 was challenged in the Goa bench of the high court by the state government.

In its order in May last year, the Mapusa district and sessions court had held that the complainant had not shown the "kind of normative behaviour" expected from a "victim of sexual assault".

The court had granted Tejpal the "benefit of the doubt" in the absence of corroborative evidence to support the allegations made by the complainant.

Challenging Tejpal's acquittal, the state government had said that the court's judgement was "coloured by prejudice and patriarchy".