Maharashtra’s suspended Deputy Inspector General of Police (Protection of Civil Rights Units) Sunil Paraskar heaved a sigh of relief on Friday as a sessions court discharged him of the charges of molestation and rape made against him by a city-based model.
Confirming the development, Special Public Prosecutor Pradeep Gharat said: “The court has discharged Paraskar from the (2014) case”. Fifty-seven-year-old Paraskar had moved the session court seeking discharge in the case, after the Mumbai police filed a 724-page chargesheet against him in May this year.
Gharat said that the Prosecution would challenge the trial court’s order in the Bombay High Court.
Ten months after they booked him for allegedly raping a model, the Mumbai police had filed a 724-page chargesheet against Paraskar in a Magistrate’s court at Borivli in north Mumbai on May 12, 2015.
The chargesheet, filed by the Malwani police in the court, contained statements of 58 witnesses and a statement of the complainant recorded before the magistrate. The chargesheet also contains the log—book of his (official) car, maintained by his driver, which shows his movements. After the police filed the chargesheet against Paraskar, the Magistrate had committed the case for trial and transferred the case to a Sessions court.
Earlier, acting on a complaint lodged by a 26-year-old model with them, the Malwani police had on July 18 last year registered an FIR against Paraskar under sections 376(2) (rape by a police officer), 376(C) (intercourse by superintendent of jail, etc) and 354(D) (stalking).
In her police complaint, the model had accused Paraskar of misusing his office and abusing her sexually in a bungalow at Madh in north Mumbai and a flat in Navi Mumbai.
The model had stated that she had met Paraskar, when was the Additional Commissioner of Police (Mumbai north) in April 2013 and that the latter had helped her in a property dispute. She had once again approached Paraskar after she began to receive calls from unknown people on the basis of a profile and photograph that an unidentified person had uploaded on an escort service website.
During the course of the meetings, the model stated that she had become familiar with Paraskar. The investigations revealed that the model and Paraskar had exchanged nearly 35 e-mails and 200-odd text messages between them.