PANAJI
The judgement acquitting former editor of Tehelka magazine Tarun Tejpal is bad in law and biased against the victim girl, the Goa police have claimed in their appeal that is scheduled to come up for hearing in the High Court on Wednesday.
The state, which had filed an appeal against the acquittal even before a certified copy of the order was made available to the parties, had sought leave from the High Court to file an amended petition no sooner the order copy was made available.
“The trial court in its 527-page-judgment has been influenced by extraneous inadmissible materials and testimonies, graphic details of the past sexual history of the victim, prohibited by law and has used the same for purposes of censuring her character, and discrediting her evidence. The entire judgment focuses on indicting the complainant witness rather than trying to ascertain the culpable role of the accused,” the appeal has said.
The Goa government has placed before the court a total of 84 grounds based on which, the prosecution seeks to argue that the acquittal should be reversed and Tejpal convicted.
The Goa government has also argued that the trial court has given undue credence to the victim’s behaviour after the alleged incident claiming that she didn’t behave like a traumatized victim.
“The burden of expectation of ‘normative’ behaviour is heavily and incorrectly placed by the trial court on the shoulders of the prosecutrix,” the state has argued adding that the “it has drawn an adverse inference against the survivor for not looking sufficiently traumatised or appearing fearful after the two incidents and in the messages she exchanged after the incidents.”
“The discrepancies that the prosecutrix attributes to the shock and trauma that she endured at the hands of a person in a position of trust and authority, who had assaulted and violated her have been disregarded, and her reactions are incorrectly treated as implausible without any logical or lawful reason,” the prosecution has said in the amended petition.
“It is most respectfully submitted that the trial court lost sight of the fact that it was the accused who was on trial and not [the victim]. It further lost sight of the fact that in a criminal trial both sides must be treated fairly,” the State has argued.
