Justice L Nageswara Rao recuses from hearing Tarun Tejpal’s appeal

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 21

Justice L Nageswara Rao of the Supreme Court on Friday recused himself from hearing former Tehelka Editor Tarun Tejpal’s appeal against an order of Goa Bench of the Bombay High Court rejecting his plea for an in-camera hearing on state of Goa’s petition challenging his acquittal in a 2013 rape case.

“I recuse as at some stage in 2016 I had appeared for the state of Goa in the matter. Let it be listed in some other court next week,” Justice Rao said.

Now, the matter will go to Chief Justice of India NV Ranama for assigning the case to an appropriate Bench.

The SC was to hear Tejpal’s plea whose application for conducting an in-camera hearing of the proceedings under Section 327 of the CrPC was rejected by the Goa Bench of the Bombay High Court on November 24, last year.

In May 2021, a Mapusa sessions court had acquitted him of the charges of sexually assaulting his then-woman colleague in a lift of a five-star hotel in Goa in November 2013. The acquittal order has been challenged before the Goa Bench of the Bombay High Court by the state of Goa.

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