Former editor-in-chief of Tehelka magazine, Tarun Tejpal, on Thursday moved the Supreme Court challenging his conviction and 10-year jail term for the 2013 rape of a woman journalist.

The Goa government too had moved the Supreme Court earlier this week seeking an enhancement of his punishment and a life term.

On August 6, the Bombay High Court in Goa had reversed Tejpal’s acquittal by a trial court and convicted him for aggravated rape and related offences and awarded him the sentence. It gave him four weeks to surrender.

The case dates back to November 2013. The survivor accused Tejpal of sexually assaulting her on two separate occasions inside the lift of a hotel in Goa while the two were alone during a literary festival. She confided in colleagues the same night and, a week later, emailed a complaint to Tehelka’s managing editor seeking an apology and an internal inquiry.

Tejpal responded with two apology emails before the matter became public and a First Information Report was registered. He was tried on charges including rape by a person in a position of trust and dominance, along with assault, sexual harassment, wrongful restraint and confinement.

In May 2021, Tejpal was acquitted of all charges by an additional sessions court in Mapusa. It said the woman’s messages to the accused established that she was “neither traumatised nor terrified” and that this “completely belies” the prosecution’s case.

The Goa government appealed to the high court, which reversed the trial court’s conclusions.

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What the high court had said

The high court, while convicting Tejpal, said that “the trial court proceeded on a notion that a victim of sexual assault must behave in a stereotypical manner”. It said the trial court ignored the reality of human coping mechanisms by expecting a survivor to be constantly miserable, meek or visibly broken. “We believe in her plight as a victim who has suffered sexual assault by her superior, whom she has known for many years…,” the judgement pointed out.

The high court noted that the appreciation of evidence by the trial court was “not only unreasonable but perverse” and criticised it for permitting an “invasive, humiliating cross-examination into the victim’s past sexual history, moral views, and personal WhatsApp messages, directly violating statutory embargoes… that prohibit questioning a victim’s character or past relationships”.

Manifestly inadequate: Goa government appeal

In its appeal before the Supreme Court, the Goa government called the sentence “manifestly inadequate” and “grossly disproportionate to the nature and gravity of the offences committed”. The state said the high court had imposed only the minimum sentence of 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment for each of the two aggravated rape convictions, with the sentences to run concurrently.

It urged the Supreme Court to enhance this to imprisonment for life, or such sentence as the court may deem fit, with the same not running concurrently. It also pointed out that the high court had “inter alia, relied upon the fact that 13 years had elapsed since the commission of the offences and that both the victim and the respondent had moved on with their lives, while imposing the minimum sentence and directing the sentences to run concurrently”.