NEW DELHI: A Delhi court has granted bail to TV actor Aashish Kapoor, accused of raping a woman during a party at North Delhi’s Civil Lines last month, while questioning the police for its delayed response in carrying out the arrest.
The bail was granted by additional sessions judge Bhupinder Singh of Tis Hazari court, on September 10. The order was uploaded to the court’s website on Sunday.
The court observed that there was nothing on record to show that the accused did not cooperate with the investigation.
The 11-page order said, “No previous involvement of the accused/applicant, in any offence whatsoever has been brought to the notice of the court. The investigations, filing of police report, and further proceedings may take some time and no purpose shall be served by keeping the accused/applicant behind the bars till such time”.
It also pulled up police for not recovering the accused’s mobile phone despite four days’ of his police custody, noting that no searches as per law were carried out.
Kapoor, through advocates Deepak Sharma and Ravish Dedha, had argued in his plea that the present FIR had been lodged against him for the sole purpose of extorting money from him and no such incident of rape took place.
The counsels argued that at the party, which took place on August 9, the complainant woman got intoxicated and initiated a fight with two other persons — who had invited the woman and Kapoor — and that the accused only tried to pacify the situation and help the complainant.
The counsels submitted that the complainant did not raise any allegations of rape when she went to the Civil Lines Police Station in relation to the physical scuffle between her and two other persons and only alleged the same after three days in order to extort money from him.
The woman, represented by Advocate Neha Kapoor, however, alleged that Kapoor entered the washroom where she was already present, on the pretext of helping and eventually raped her. She submitted WhatsApp chats between the complainant and the woman to support her submissions.
The court, while reprimanding the police for its conduct in investigating the case, questioned the motive behind arresting Kapoor all of a sudden and that too, three weeks after the incident. It said, “…police did not even serve a notice for appearance to the accused for joining the investigation except on August 30, after three weeks of the incident”.
The court added, “No efforts were made to make the accused/applicant join the investigation for a good 21 days and all of a sudden, the police served notice on August 30, with direction to join the investigation ‘forthwith’ and as per IO (investigating officer), a police team was sent to Goa/Pune to arrest the accused simultaneously”.
Noting that Kapoor was arrested on September 2, the court said that if he had to abscond — a contention police made while opposing the bail plea — he would have done so immediately on coming to know about the registration of a case against him.
While imposing multiple bail conditions, the court asked Kapoor to furnish a personal bond of ₹1 lakh and a surety of the like amount.