Of bosses & judges

HC sentence for Tejpal shows how grievously trial courts can misjudge rape cases

In 2013, a young colleague accused Tarun Tejpal of raping her in a hotel lift. This was the first high-profile case under the Criminal Law Amendment Act passed that year. The post-Nirbhaya legislation aimed to punish sexual offences against women more dependably and strictly. In 2021, a Goa trial court acquitted Tejpal. It was a terribly controversial judgment, not for its conclusion per se, but for the way it got there. Yesterday, Bombay HC’s Goa bench set that acquittal aside, and sentenced Tejpal to 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment. It has called out the trial court’s findings as “directly contrary to the evidence on record” and “perverse”. For all the other rape survivors navigating the courts, it may be some comfort that justice was only delayed here, not denied. But because the tendencies Bombay HC identified in one trial court are shared with countless others, this comfort is cold.

One such tendency is relying on “stereotypical assumptions about how an ‘ideal’ victim should physically resist or emotionally react”. Another is weaponising her sexual history to “discredit her evidence”, while granting “the benefit of the doubt to the respondent where none reasonably existed”. Basically, when ‘men in power’ abuse their authority in the workplace, all too often their social advantage outside the court continues inside it. Another case this week, Brij Bhushan Singh’s, has played out similarly in another trial court. It remains to be seen whether an HC will flip the acquittal here too.

It’s a strange thing that between the start and ‘close’ of the Tejpal case, #MeToo moment both gained ‘virality’ and lost it. This speaks to how non-urgently the legal system continues to take rape cases, no matter how dire these feel to the survivors. And it also resonates with how much has, or hasn’t, changed in India’s workplaces. Compliance with Vishaka guidelines remains uneven. Accusers can yet be met with institutional hostility, while the accused is protected. By Tejpal’s own account, when reminded that he was her boss, he replied, “That makes it simpler.” What is the simple thing here? That, without proper checks, without employers and courts that care, workplace hierarchy greases sexual harassment. Because it can take away not just promotions, assignments, references, but one’s livelihood itself.

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