CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has quashed an FIR on sexual harassment of a woman filed against self-styled godman Siva Shankar Baba, who runs a school in the suburbs of Chennai, due to a “technical flaw”. Justice RN Manjula recently passed the order, quashing the FIR filed by CB-CID under sections 354 of IPC and 4 of the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Harassment of Women Act, 2002, citing time limitation.
The FIR was registered in 2021 after the woman lodged a complaint with police alleging that she was sexually harassed by Baba in 2010-11 when she approached him after his son was removed from the school. She lodged the complaint in the wake of a series of child-abuse allegations against him.
Citing delay in lodging the complaint and the lack of an application for condoning the delay under Section 473 of CrPC along with the FIR, the judge quashed the FIR. “Though the allegation made by the second respondent (the woman) is serious in nature, because of the absence of any petition under Section 473 CrPC to condone the delay, filed along with the complaint, the case becomes barred by limitation,” Justice Manjula said in the order. “In the said circumstances, I feel that the investigation cannot serve any fruitful purpose and for the reasons of technical flaw, the FIR is liable to be quashed,” she added.