T-Series owner Bhushan Kumar withdraws plea in HC against rape FIR after magistrate accepts closure report

Kumar, the son of the late music baron Gulshan Kumar, was booked in July 2021 for allegedly raping a woman repeatedly on the pretext of giving her a job in his music record label and film production company. The police lodged an FIR following a complaint filed by the 30-year-old woman, who alleged that Kumar sexually assaulted her several times between September 2017 and August 2022. She also claimed that Kumar threatened to harm her.

During the previous hearing in April this year, the high court had noted that a rape victim granting her consent through an affidavit to quash the FIR was not ground enough to grant relief to the accused. “Merely because the parties to the case are consenting, the FIR under Section 376 of IPC should not be quashed,” the high court had noted.

The bench had observed that in the present case, the relationship between the accused and the victim did not seem consensual and it would also have to examine if the crime was heinous or not.

Advocate Niranjan Mundargi, for Kumar, had submitted that his client was booked in 2021 for alleged incidents since 2017 and that the police had filed the B-summary report (closure report) before the magistrate concerned.

While the magistrate court last year had rejected the first closure report filed by the police and had asked them to investigate further, it accepted the second closure report this year.

A B-summary report is where the police find that the complaint is “maliciously false” and that the complainant lied about charges against an accused.

On Thursday, Mundargi informed the high court that the magistrate court in Andheri had accepted the closure report on November 9 by which the FIR against Kumar had come to an end, after which the high court allowed Kumar to withdraw his writ plea.