Tarun Tejpal surrenders in Goa, taken into police custody
Tarun Tejpal surrendered before a Mapusa court on Monday and was taken into police custody, days after the Supreme Court refused him exemption from surrender.
Former Tehelka editor-in-chief Tarun Tejpal surrendered before a local court in Mapusa, Goa, on Monday and was taken into police custody. A senior police officer said he was subsequently moved to the Central Jail in Colvale.
Speaking to media persons outside the court, Tejpal said, "I just want to say that we are in the Supreme Court and we are sure that justice will come."
His surrender followed last month's Supreme Court order rejecting his plea for an exemption from surrendering in a case of the 2013 rape of a woman journalist, in which he stands convicted of aggravated rape and related offences. The High Court of Bombay at Goa, which sentenced him on August 6, had granted him four weeks to surrender.
The complainant had accused Tejpal of sexually assaulting her in a hotel elevator in Goa on November 7 and November 8, 2013. In 2021, a sessions court in Goa acquitted him, holding that the complainant "did not demonstrate any kind of normative behaviour" that a victim of sexual assault "might plausibly show".
The Goa government appealed against the acquittal. On August 6, the High Court overturned the trial court's verdict and sentenced Tejpal to ten years in jail. In its ruling, the High Court observed that the idea of a perfect victim is a myth and that neither the court nor the respondent can decide how a survivor should react or process trauma. It held that the trial court had proceeded on the notion that a victim of sexual assault must behave in a stereotypical manner.
The High Court described the trial court's appreciation of evidence as "not only unreasonable, but perverse", and criticised it for allowing an invasive, humiliating cross-examination into the victim's past sexual history, moral views and personal WhatsApp messages, in violation of statutory embargoes that bar questioning a victim's character or past relationships.
Tejpal has since moved the Supreme Court challenging his conviction and ten-year jail term, and that appeal against the August 6 ruling is pending. The Goa government also approached the Supreme Court last month seeking enhancement of his punishment to a life term. In its appeal, the state called the sentence "manifestly inadequate" and "grossly disproportionate to the nature and gravity of the offences committed".
The state pointed out that the High Court had imposed only the minimum sentence of ten years' rigorous imprisonment for each of the two aggravated rape convictions, to run concurrently, and urged the Supreme Court to enhance it to imprisonment for life, or such sentence as the court may deem fit, not running concurrently.