PANAJI
The Bombay High Court at Goa granted bail to Varun Nayyar, a Panaji-based restaurant owner who was arrested in August for allegedly raping a minor mentally challenged girl in a hotel room.
The High Court allowed the bail application on a bond of Rs 50,000 and a surety of a like amount besides also asking Nayyar not to interfere with the investigation or threaten witnesses as well as to not leave the state without the permission of the investigating officer among other conditions.
Nayyar, who saw his application rejected by the lower courts approached the High court that it was a case of mistaken identity and that the eyewitnesses had wrongly identified him as being in the company of the victim girl.
The girl’s mother had filed a complaint with the Porvorim police station stating that an unknown person came by a car, picked up the victim, a minor girl, on the road, took her to a hotel, and in the room he molested her. When she raised an alarm, he let her dress up and then dropped her back from where he had picked her. The mother told the police that she narrated the incident to her after she reached home which prompted her to file the complaint against unknown persons.
However, based on the statements of certain alleged eyewitnesses who are said to have seen the applicant taking the victim girl, the accused Varun Nayyar was arrested on August 21.
Adv Arus Braz de Sa who represented Nayyar told the court that neither the victim girl nor the so called star witnesses, who are said to have seen the victim girl in the company of Nayyar, could identify the applicant in the test identification parade. “Even the prosecution ‘say’ has been categoric that neither the victim girl nor the alleged eye witnesses could identify the applicant as the culprit in the identification parade. He has also submitted that in the chargesheet,there is hardly any material worth the name to link the applicant to the crime,” he said.
However, the prosecution opposed the bail application claiming that since the case involves a minor girl, who has been suffering from dyslexia and as such the accused cannot take advantage of the fact that she could not recognise him.
The High Court, while appreciating the arguments before the court ruled that Nayyar was entitled to bail.
