BENGALURU: Former Hassan MP Prajwal Revanna is not entitled to relief of regular bail for the reasons that the statement given by the victim of rape under Section 161 of CrPC would indicate that she was subjected to forcible sexual intercourse by him and also the investigation is not yet completed into the allegations which are serious and grave to be viewed seriously, said the Special Court for trial of cases against sitting and former MPs/MLAs.
Stating that the prosecution has made out a strong prima facie case against Prajwal while also contending that there is a chance of flight risk if he is admitted to bail, Judge Santhosh Gajanan Bhat rejected the bail. The order of rejection of bail dated June 26 was available on Friday.
The court recorded the contents of the complaint of the victim lodged with the SIT that she was not a consenting party at the time of the alleged offence while working as a helper at the Basavanagudi residence of former minister HD Revanna and his son Prajwal. When she visited the house at the request of Revanna’s wife Bhavani to clean it, Prajwal had ravished her, the court pointed out while extracting the victim’s statement.
The victim’s complaint also contained information about the earlier advances being made by Revanna, who allegedly touched her inappropriately four years after she came in contact with them after Revanna’s son Suraj’s marriage in 2015. Prajwal also used to make video calls to her daughter and had tried to provoke her by speaking about sexual issues, it said. Though she had thought of resisting sometimes, the other workers advised her not to do that saying a false case would be foisted against her, it said.
The court said the statement of the victim is required to be considered true and correct as in the Indian scenario, normally women will not come forward to state falsely about the ravishing of her chastity. The provision which has been invoked against Prajwal is under Section 376(K) of IPC wherein if a person in a position of control or dominance over a woman, commits rape on such woman, the same would be held punishable and also under Section 66E of IT Act, 2000. Both these aspects would indicate the commission of the heinous offence by him and the alleged act recorded on his mobile phone is to be recovered, the court noted.
Referring to the arguments of Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) B N Jagadeesha, the court said that Prajwal was enjoying high influence and had a social standing with a political clout of his own.