Punjab and Haryana HC grants bail to former MLA Simarjit Singh Bains in ‘rape’ case
The high court thus imposing conditions while allowing the bail plea said that “provided the petitioner is not required in any other case, he shall be released on bail in the FIR”.
2 min read
The high court thus imposing conditions while allowing the bail plea said that “provided the petitioner is not required in any other case, he shall be released on bail in the FIR”. The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Wednesday allowed the bail plea of former Punjab MLA and Lok Insaaf Party (LIP) leader Simarjit Singh Bains in an alleged rape and sexual harassment case registered against him at Ludhiana in 2021.
Bains, through his counsels Senior Advocate A P S Deol with Himmat Deol, had argued that in the complaint dated October 5, 2020, which the victim gave to the then Punjab chief minister, there are vital improvements and omissions, and that the present FIR had been registered to ruin the petitioner’s career at the instance of his political opponents, and the complainant is playing into their hands.
While opposing the bail, counsels for the state of Punjab – Additional Advocate Generals Ferry Sofat and Prashant Manchanda – contended that given the criminal past, the accused is likely to indulge in crimes after he is released on bail. Also, there is no inconsistency in the victim’s allegations, which have been corroborated by call detail records, it was contended.
A bench of Justice Anoop Chitkara, after hearing the contentions, said, “The gist of the prosecutrix’s allegations is that the petitioner taking advantage of her precarious financial conditions, which had worsened due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and further became unmanageable due to default in payment of bank installments, made her sleep with him on numerous occasions. The prosecutrix’s stand, as pointed out by her counsel, is that even if this court presumes that she had given her consent to coitus, such consent was nothing but passive consent, for which she had no other option given her financial turmoil and loss of her husband, which further aggravated by the loss of earnings in the family due to Covid-19 pandemic.”
The high court thus imposing conditions while allowing the bail plea said that “provided the petitioner is not required in any other case, he shall be released on bail in the FIR”.
You May Like
