A sessions court in Mumbai dismissed a petition filed against a magistrate’s order discharging Shilpa Shetty in the 2007 obscenity case over Richard Gere kissing her at a public event. For the uninitiated, the incident occurred during an AIDS awareness programme held in Rajasthan. The revision application against the magistrate court’s order was dismissed by additional sessions judge SC Jadhav. The detailed order, however, was not available as yet.
A case was registered against the Hollywood star and Shetty under sections 292, 293 and 294 of the Indian Penal Code, section 67 of the Information Technology Act nd sections 4 and 6 of the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986. It was later transferred to Mumbai on the Supreme Court’s orders. Observing that the Bollywood actress seemed to be the victim in the incident, the magistrate court discharged Shetty.
On the allegation that she did not protest when she was kissed, the magistrate’s court had said “this by no stretch of the imagination makes her a conspirator or perpetrator of any crime”.
Shetty was discharged from the case on January 2022 after metropolitan magistrate Ketaki Chavan observed that the charged levelled on her were groundless.
However, the prosecution filed a revision application before the sessions court claiming the magistrate “erred in discharging the accused” and that the order was “illegal, bad in law and against the principle of natural justice” and deserves to be set aside.
As per the prosecution, prima-facie a case was made out to frame charges against the accused and that the magistrate ought to have taken into consideration that act of the accused/respondent to kiss or allow to be kissed in public definitely came within the purview of Obscene Act.
Shetty’s response, filed through advocate Prashant Patil, had said the magistrate court’s order was “well-reasoned and based upon the guidelines of the Supreme Court” and, hence, the revision application needs to be dismissed with heavy costs.
(With PTI inputs)
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