MP high court quashes FIR against former FM Raghavji in ‘unnatural sex’ case

The Madhya Pradesh high court on Friday quashed the first information report (FIR) filed against Raghavji, the former finance miner. Former MP finance miner Raghavji (PTI Photo) The former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislator was arrested and was facing charges under section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in July 2013 for sodomising a youth. In July 2013, Raghavji was arrested following a complaint his house help in which he mentioned that he was sexually assaulted then-finance miner Raghavji and produced a CD. In the petition filed Raghavji, the statement of the father of the complainant has been included as significant evidence. Also Read: Karnataka HC quashes case against CM Siddaramaiah, DCM D K Shivakumar for COVID-19 rule violation According to the father of the complainant, his son was not “mentally stable” and also a habitual intoxicant and in the “habit of making fallacious allegations against high-up-place persons of the society”. “Earlier too he made (false) allegations against someone. My son is trying to blackmail the petitioner as he is in the wrong hands of leaders of political rivals of the petitioner,” reads the statement of the father. A single bench of justice Sanjay Dwivedi of the MP high court took into account the statement the father of the complainant and said, “The complaint is sugarcoated with ill-motive, made to belittle the image in society and casting a stigma on the name of high-up-place person, who also holds an important portfolio in the State of MP. Notably, for almost three years, the complainant remained reticent and astoundingly it is only after he left the petitioner’s house, he felt humiliated that he made the complaint.” “The complaint was made after handing-in-gloves with the leaders of rival parties and therefore it is nothing but the assimilation of personal and political antipathies, more precisely, a politically-oriented-animosity, which makes the petitioner’s prosecution malicious,” said the court on Friday while quashing the FIR. Also Read: Punjab HC allows drugs case kingpin to attend mother’s bhog ceremony under police’s watch “Indeed, the admission of the complainant that he planned and prepared CD itself raises clouds over the demeanour of the complainant and suggests that he was anyhow bent upon collecting material against the petitioner so that at a later point of time it can be used against the petitioner,” reads the order. “As a result, finding no offence under Section 377 of IPC is made out as it is a case of consent and further that the prosecution of the petitioner is malicious, therefore, I allow the petition. Thus, FIR regered at police station Habibganj, drict Bhopal, against the petitioner (Raghavji) for the offence punishable under Sections 377, 506, 34 of the IPC is here quashed,” the court order further said.