The Bombay High Court on Thursday convicted former Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal of sexually assaulting a colleague in 2013, overturning a notorious trial court order that shamed and blamed the survivor’s character to acquit the accused. The HC order is significant not just in serving justice to the survivor, but for also acting as a corrective on the trial court’s 2021 order.
Over 527 pages, the trial court had tried the survivor rather than the accused, and violated legal strictures against raising the survivor’s character and sexual history as evidence against an act of sexual violence. The trial court had allowed the survivor and prosecution witnesses to be subject to humiliating questioning by the defence. Every minor inconsistency in her version was scrutinised, whereas the defence’s versions were wholeheartedly accepted. The HC calls this out and points out that the survivor and prosecution witnesses withstood the brutal questioning and held firm to their accounts.
Significantly, the HC deconstructed the myth of the ‘ideal victim’ that the trial court had invoked—a lesson the judicial system must imbibe. The HC pointed out that survivors react in different ways to assault; the composure of a woman after being attacked cannot be seen as evidence of no attack.
The long journey towards justice was the worst nightmare of every survivor of sexual violence, evidencing why so many victims hesitate to come forward. During the trial of over seven years, the survivor was shamed and humiliated in court, subjected to what activists have termed a ‘digital strip search’, as her entire chat history was made available to the accused, which was then discredited by the accused and his powerful friends, as well as by the trial court. The case was put through a media trial, too.
The HC verdict has not only vindicated her but has also restored faith in the judicial system for other women—not just by calling out the trial court’s grievous errors, but also by relying on the case’s well-established facts, including CCTV footage supporting witness accounts and apology letters written by the accused that supported the survivor’s account. Tejpal has claimed he is a political victim—the jury is out on that claim. Only one thing is certain today—he has been convicted of rape on the basis of stellar evidence.