A session court in Goa on Friday acquitted journalist Tarun Tejpal in the sexual assault case filed against him, reported ANI. Tejpal, the...
A session court in Goa on Friday acquitted journalist Tarun Tejpal in the sexual assault case filed against him, reported ANI. Tejpal, the former editor-in-chief of Tehelka magazine, was accused of raping a junior colleague in an elevator in 2013.
Tejpal has been out on bail since 2014.
In a statement released on Friday, Tejpal thanked his lawyer Rajiv Gomes, who died of the coronavirus last week. The journalist claimed that the last seven-a-half-years had been traumatic for his family as they had to deal with the “catastrophic fallout of these false accusations”.
“We have felt boot of the state, but thorough it all we have co-operated fully with the Goa police and the legal system, through hundreds of court proceedings,” the statement said.
Tejpal also thanked the court and Additional Sessions Judge Kshama Joshi for her verdict. “It is with profound respect that I thank this court for its rigorous, impartial, and fair trial and for it thorough examination of the CCTV footage and other empirical material on record,” Tejpal said.
Statement from the Tejpal family: pic.twitter.com/A48jgednyS
— Smita (@smitagnair) May 21, 2021
The case
The verdict was expected earlier but deferred multiple times. On Wednesday, when the ruling was deferred to Friday, Tejpal’s lawyer Suhas Velip had said that that it was because the additional sessions court judge at Mapusa...
