Sexual assault case: Special Court rejects Prajwal Revanna's plea to discharge him

Bengaluru: The special court for cases involving MPs/MLAs has rejected the application filed by Prajwal Revanna, former Member of Parliament from Hassan, seeking discharge from a sexual assault case initially registered at the Holenarasipura police station in Hassan district.

Special Court judge Santosh Gajanan Bhat observed that there are sufficient materials to frame charges against him.

Prajwal had moved the application seeking discharge in the case he was chargesheeted for sexually assaulting a domestic help at his Gannikada guest house in Hassan district during the second lockdown period in 2021 and subsequently at his house in Basavanagudi, Bengaluru.  

The chargesheet filed by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of CID stated that the victim along with her husband and sisters were working as maid servants at Gannikada guest house about eight years back.

During the lockdown period of 2021, Prajwal Revanna had visited the guest house and allegedly assaulted her. The chargesheet said the accused had also recorded the incident by holding a mobile phone in his hand. The victim had left the job in the year 2022 and had been doing menial jobs in her village.

In his application seeking discharge, Revanna submitted that the incident itself was highly improbable and that there is inordinate delay of more than four years in filing the complaint (in 2024) which has not been properly explained. The advocate for Prajwal argued that unless the alleged incident is pointed out to have been committed on specific date and time, the bald allegations cannot be accepted.  It was further submitted that the original mobile phone through which it was recorded was not recovered by the police. The advocate claimed that in the era of digitalization the question of morphing and creating fake video were always possible.

On the other hand, Special Public Prosecutor Jagadish B N submitted that the SIT has conducted a comprehensive investigation and that sufficient incriminating materials were collected against the accused. He said the FSL report had indicated that the videos were not edited or morphed and the voice sample matched with that of the video.

The court perused material in the chargesheet and said that the victim’s statement was corroborated with the statements of other witnesses. The court said while the prosecution is required to explain the delay for lodging the complaint, the same cannot be appreciated at the time of considering the discharge application.

“I have also perused the statement of other witnesses and also the materials collected by the Investigating Agency. On looking into the aforesaid aspects which clearly casts a grave suspicion with respect to commission of the offence and as such the question of discharging the accused on the aforesaid aspects does not arise,” the court said.

Background

There are four FIRs registered against Prajwal between April 28, 2024 and June 10, 2024 at Holenarasipura police station, two crimes at Cyber Crime police station, Bengaluru, and another at Cyber Crime police station, CID, Bengaluru. One more crime was registered at KR Nagar police station, against Prajwal’s father and Holenarasipura MLA HD Revanna and others. All these cases were handed over to the SIT, CID.