BENGALURU: Orally observing that the law cannot be bent for former Hassan MP Prajwal Revanna, the Karnataka High Court on Thursday said that it can only allow him to examine digital evidence concerning the victim who filed the complaint against him and not other victims who have not made statements against him.
“You (accused Prajwal) will get anything pertaining to the case which is being tried by the trial court concerning the rape of a domestic help. But if you try to extract material relating to all the women you had escapades with, that can’t be permitted. When other victims are not giving any statements against you, why do you want to invade their privacy? We can’t allow invasion of their privacy,” the court observed.
Justice M Nagaprasanna made these observations while rejecting the contention of the counsel of Prajwal that the images or digital evidence sought to be examined by him are not necessarily obscene.
On the last occasion, while hearing Prajwal’s plea seeking directives to the trial court for considering his application under Section 207 of the CrPC for the production of certain electronic evidence collected by the SIT, the HC had asked the trial court to continue the hearing in one of the cases of sexual assault but not frame charges till January 16.
Continuing further hearing on Thursday, the HC observed that the images here even of the victim are obscene.
Pointing out that the petition was filed by Prajwal with an intention to delay the trial, Special Public Prosecutor BN Jagadeesha submitted that copies of the images and videos concerned to the trial in the impugned crime registered in KR Nagar police station is all furnished to the petitioner, in addition to other three cases against the accused.
“Now, he has asked for copies of over 15,000 images and 2,000 videos recovered from a phone that allegedly belonged to his driver. Most of these images and videos contain details of other victims in the case and providing all those images and videos will end up in revealing their identity,” he told the court.
It was also contended by the SPP that what the petitioner is now seeking is the content of the entire phone that forms part of the forensic report dated June 18, 2024.