News Analysis India

Tag: Goa govt

  • Tarun Tejpal case: Victim named and shamed, trial court order ‘fit for 5th century’, Goa govt tells HC

    By PTI

    PANAJI: The Goa government told the Bombay High Court’s bench here on Wednesday that the victim in a 2013 rape case, in which journalist Tarun Tejpal was acquitted, was named and shamed and the trial court’s judgement was “retrograde” and “fit for fifth century”.

    The Goa bench of the HC, comprising Justices Revati Mohite Dere and M S Jawalkar, later adjourned the hearing into the matter till November 16, when it will hear Tejpal’s application challenging the maintainability of the state government’s appeal against his acquittal in the case.

    Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta, representing the Goa government, stated before the bench that the prosecutrix (woman) was “named and shamed”.

    He also termed the judgment of the trial court as “retrograde” and “fit for fifth century”.

    Justice Dere said “in not just this case, but in all the cases of rape, we will not allow lawyers to read the evidence, we will read it ourselves”.

    She said a lawyer can point out the page number while submitting about the evidence.

    On May 21 this year, a sessions court acquitted Tejpal, the former editor-in-chief of the Tehelka magazine, in the case where he was accused of sexually assaulting his then colleague in a lift of a five-star hotel in Goa in November 2013 when they were attending an event.

    Later, the Goa government filed an appeal against it in the HC.

    The matter came up before the HC’s division bench on Wednesday when Tejpal’s lawyer Amit Desai submitted to the court to consider two applications filed by him.

    Tejpal has challenged the maintainability of the Goa government’s appeal against his acquittal in the case.

    Desai said the permission to file application (challenging the session court’s order) was not granted by the state government to the public prosecutor on the day when it was filed.

    He also said that they have filed an application for ‘in-camera’ hearing into the matter, which Mehta opposed.

    The bench will hear later Tejpal’s application seeking in-camera hearing into the matter.

    The hearing on Wednesday was held in virtual mode.

  • Goa govt demarcates land for IIT campus amid protests

    By PTI
    PANAJI: The Goa government on Tuesday demarcated the land for the proposed Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) campus at Shel-Melaulim village in Sattari taluka of North Goa amid heavy police deployment and protests.

    Locals from the village are opposing the IIT project claiming that the facility would rob them of their land.

    Chief Minister Pramod Sawant had on Sunday claimed that the state government is going ahead with the project, despite the protests.

    A large posse of policemen descended at Shel-Melaulim village only to be stopped by a crowd of 200-odd locals, mostly women, who reiterated that they would not part with their land for the project.

    Police teams were called in to prevent villagers from stopping officers of the state land survey department from demarcating the land for the project, a senior police official said.

    “The situation turned tense when villagers realised that they were kept busy at the protest site, while some of the survey officers had already completed their work by entering the area through a forest road,” one of the protestors claimed.

    According to eyewitnesses, there were minor clashes between villagers and police in the afternoon when the land survey officers had already left the scene.

    “The demarcation was done without our consent. We don’t recognise the process,” said Nikita Naik, one of the protestors.

    “Villagers had been protesting peacefully till now, but the time has come for us to get more aggressive to save our land,” she said.