Bengaluru: The Karnataka High Court on Friday (February 7), granted anticipatory bail to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa in a sexual assault case registered against him under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and remitted the matter back to the trial court.
Justice M Nagaprasanna partly allowed Yediyurappa’s plea challenging the proceedings against him under the provisions of POCSO Act and seeking quashing of the criminal case filed against him.
Yediyurappa has been booked under the provisions of IPC, POCSO Act
The 81-year-old Yediyurappa has been booked under the provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) as well as the POCSO Act on a complaint made by 17-year-old victim’s 54-year-old mother, who died in a Bengaluru hospital due to lung cancer in May last year.
What did the High Court say?
“Writ petition (Filed by Yediyurappa) is allowed in part. The order of taking cognizance by the concerned court dated 04-07-2024, qua accused number 1 (Yeddyurappa) stands obliterated. The crime, the investigation and the final report all remain intact. The matter is remitted back to the hands of the concerned court to pass appropriate orders on the final report so placed before it by the CID bearing in mind the observations made in the course of the order,” the High Court said.
Justice Nagaprasanna made it clear that “this court has not answered any of the contentions so advanced by both the senior learned counsel for the petitioner (Yediyurappa) and the respondent, except with regard to the order of taking cognizance. All other contentions would remain open. The petitioner is at liberty to avail of such remedy as is available in law at the appropriate stage before the appropriate forum,” news agency PTI reported.
Case against former chief minister was registered on March 14 last year
The case against the former chief minister was registered on March 14 last year based on a complaint by the victim’s mother alleging that Yediyurappa sexually assaulted her daughter during a meeting on February 2 last year at his Dollars Colony residence in Bengaluru.
The former Karnataka chief minister has been charged under section 8 (punishment for sexual assault) of the POCSO Act and sections 354A (sexual harassment), 204 (destruction of document or electronic record to prevent its production as evidence) and 214 (offering gift or restoration of property in consideration of screening offender) of the IPC. The other three co-accused who are aides of Yediyurappa – Arun Y M, Rudresh M and G Mariswamy – have been charged under sections 204 and 214 of IPC.
The CID, which has probed the case, has alleged in the charge sheet filed before a Fast Track Court on June 27 last year that Yediyurappa and three other accused paid money to the purported victim and her mother to buy their silence.
