Kriti Agrawal –
Supreme Court dismissed a petition challenging Delhi High Court’s ruling granting anticipatory bail to Varun Hiremath, a Mumbai TV journalist accused of raping a 22-year-old woman in the National Capital, in connection with FIR lodged at Chanakyapuri Police Station.
The petitioner has asked for a stay of the Delhi High Court’s order of May 13, 2021, claiming that the High Court granted anticipatory bail to the accused in a case of rape and assault when the accused absconded and deliberately evaded a non-bailable warrant and the process under Section 82 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
Varun’s plea was accepted on May 13 by a single judge bench headed by Justice Mukta Gupta. Last month, the Court gave Hiremath interim protection from arrest on the condition that he join the investigation whenever necessary.
Delhi Court had already issued a non-bailable warrant for Hiremath, and the police had filed a dossier with the Delhi Police Headquarters for a potential reward announcement if he was apprehended.
Rejecting his anticipatory bail application in the rape case of a 22-year-old the Judge on March 13 decision said, “So far as the matter of consent or no consent, if the woman states in her statement before the Court that she did not consent, the Court shall presume that she did not consent.”
Varun Hiremath is charged in an FIR filed by a 22-year-old Pune woman in the Chanakyapuri Police Station in New Delhi under Indian Penal Code sections 376 (rape), 342 (wrongful detention), and 509 (insulting a woman’s modesty).
A watch circular had been issued against him by the Delhi Police, preventing him from leaving the country.