Tarun Tejpal case: Trial court virtually set guidelines for victim’s response, says Goa government

“…that something which is [a] sexual offence, the law requires…it to be dealt with differently, because of the very sensitivity involved in this case. Here, if I may say, the trial court has done everything which it could not have done and ought not to have done in a matter of this offence. The trial court virtually lays down guidelines as to how the victim should respond in such circumstances,” he said.

The woman had complained that Tejpal had sexually assaulted her in the hotel elevator on November 7, 2013, and November 8, 2013.

In 2021, a sessions court in Goa acquitted Tejpal of all charges, observing that the complainant “did not demonstrate any kind of normative behaviour” that a victim of sexual assault “might plausibly show”. Ruling there was no medical evidence, the court said the woman’s messages to the accused clearly establish that she was neither “traumatised nor terrified” and this “completely belies” the prosecution’s case.

Tejpal was acquitted of all charges, including under IPC Sections 341 (wrongful restraint); 342 (wrongful confinement); 354 (assault or criminal force with intent to outrage modesty); 354A (sexual harassment); 354B (assault or use of criminal force to woman with intent to disrobe); 376 (2)(f) (person in position of authority over women, committing rape); and 376(2)(k) (rape by person in position of control). The Goa government had subsequently filed an appeal in the High Court of Bombay at Goa challenging the acquittal.

In its judgment in 2021, the trial court had said there was no corroborative evidence supporting the allegations made by the complainant. “It is extremely revealing that the prosecutrix’s account neither demonstrates any kind of normative behaviour on her own part – that a prosecutrix of sexual assault on consecutive two nights might plausibly show nor does it show any such behaviour on the part of the accused”.

The trial court had said it was unnatural on the part of the woman to message Tejpal about her location in the hotel where she was chaperoning a prominent US actor. “If the prosecutrix had been recently again been sexually assaulted by the accused and was terrified of him and not in a proper state of mind, why would she report to the accused and disclose to him her location, when she could have reported to (three women),” the court had noted in the judgment.

“The unnatural conduct of the prosecutrix is again relevant under Section 8 of the Evidence Act. The prosecutrix had admitted that there are two SMSes sent from her phone to the accused on 8/11/2013…and that these messages were not sent by her in response to any messages…The prosecutrix sending the above message to the accused proactively without any attempt by him to ask her where she was, and her sending the same message thrice in the span of a very few minutes, clearly establishes that the prosecutrix was not traumatised nor terrified of being located or found by the accused and completely belies the prosecution case that immediately before the said messages, the accused had sexually assaulted the prosecutrix again,” the court had added.