Peepli live' co-director Mahmood Farooqui will walk free from Tihar Jail, with the Delhi High Court on Monday acquitting him in a rape case involving a US researcher, saying it remained doubtful whether any such incident took place.
The High Court, which analysed the case, granted Farooqui the benefit of doubt and set aside the trial court order that had awarded a seven-year jail term to Farooqui after convicting him for the alleged rape of a 30-year-old American researcher at his south Delhi residence in March 2015.
Justice Ashutosh Kumar asked the Tihar jail authorities to forthwith release Farooqui, who has been in custody since August 4, 2016.
While reading out the operative portion of the verdict, the judge said “the testimony of the victim is not reliable and there are discrepancies.”
In the 82-page judgement, the court said though Farooqui's mental condition of bipolar disorder may not be a ground to justify any act which is prohibited under law, it can be taken into consideration while deciding whether he had the correct cognitive perception to understand the exact import of any communication by the other person.
It, however, said since no evidence has been led on this aspect, any foray into this field would only be fraught with speculative imagination, which this court does not intend to undertake.”But it remains in doubt as to whether such an incident, as has been narrated by the prosecutrix, took place and if at all it had taken place, it was without the consent/will of the prosecutrix and if it was without her consent, whether the appellant (Farooqui) could discern/understand the same. “Under such circumstances, benefit of doubt is necessarily to be given to Farooqui,” the court said in its judgement.