Karnataka High Court reserves verdict on Prajwal Revanna’s petitions seeking bail in rape cases  

The High Court of Karnataka on Thursday reserved its verdict on three petitions filed by former Member of Parliament Prajwal Revanna seeking bail in a rape case and anticipatory bail in a sexual assault case and another rape case registered based on separate complaints of three women.

Seeking the grant of bail in the rape case lodged based on a complaint of a former help, Senior Advocate Prabhuling K. Navadgi, appearing for Mr. Prajwal Revanna, contended that the complaint was lodged after a delay of four years without any explanation for the delay.

‘Not confirmed in FSL report’

He also contended that the report of the Forensic Sciences Laboratory (FSL) on the video related to the alleged rape, has neither confirmed the identity of the victim nor has it traced the source of the video to Mr. Prajwal Revanna. These aspects could be ascertained from the FLS report appended to the chargesheet filed by the Special Investigation Team (SIT), it was pointed out to the court.

Mr. Navadgi also contended that the former help had on an earlier occasion lodged a complaint against H.D. Revanna, father of Mr. Prajawal Revanna about the forceful eviction of her from a government-allotted house but she had not made an allegation of either sexual assault or rape.

She had not even alleged rape either in an interview given to a television channel before lodging the complaint or in her written complaint to the Holenarsipur police as the allegations then limited to only sexual assault, attracting Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code, it was argued while pointing out that the allegation of rape was introduced only by way of further statements given to the police much later.

‘Continuous threat’

However, Special Public Prosecutor Ravivarma Kumar contended that she could not lodge a complaint for the past four years due to the continuous threat posed by the father and son. The SPP also said that the identity of the complainant could not be matched in the FSL report as she was covering her face with her hand to protect her identity during the alleged sexual act even though genuineness of the video was established.

The SPP opposed the grant of bail stating that Mr. Prajwal Revanna is a flight risk as he had “left” the country when allegations surfaced in public domain.

Justice M. Nagaprasanna, who heard the arguments, reserved the verdict in all the three petitions.

Two other cases

The anticipatory bail has been sought in the rape case registered by a former member of the Hassan Zilla Panchayat, who alleged that Mr. Prajwal Revanna had repeatedly raped her and video-graphed the sexual act. In the case of sexual assault, a woman from Hassan had alleged that she took Mr. Prajwal Revanna’s help for her son’s admission to a school and taking advantage of that he had started to make video calls to her and coerced her to strip and recorded such scene.

Published - September 19, 2024 10:28 pm IST