On Friday, Supreme Court Justice L Nageswara Rao recused himself from hearing journalist Tarun Tejpal’s appeal against the Bombay High Court’s refusal to accept his request for an in-camera hearing of the proceedings challenging his acquittal in a 2013 rape case. ‘ I recuse as at some stage in 2016, I had appeared for state of Goa in the matter. Let it be heard in a different court next week, said Justice Rao, who was on the bench with Justice B R Gavai.
The court was to hear Tejpal’s appeal, whose application for an in-camera hearing of the proceedings under section 327 of the CrPC was denied by the Bombay High Court’s Goa bench on November 24 last year.
The state government contested the acquittal of the former editor-in-chief of Tehelka magazine, who was accused of sexually assaulting his then-woman colleague in the lift of a five-star hotel in Goa in November 2013, by a sessions court in May 2021. Tejpal’s lawyer, senior advocate Amit Desai, had cited the Law Commission and various high court judgments in support of his request for an in-camera hearing.
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