The former BJP legislator was arrested and was facing charges under section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in July 2013 for sodomising a youth.
Former MP finance minister Raghavji (PTI Photo)
The first information report (FIR) submitted against Raghavji, the former finance minister, was dismissed by the Madhya Pradesh high court on Friday.
In July 2013, the former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lawmaker was detained and charged with sodomizing a minor in violation of section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
After receiving a complaint from his housekeeper claiming to have been sexually assaulted by the then-finance minister Raghavji and having produced a CD, Raghavji was detained in July 2013.
The father of the complainant's statement has been included as important evidence in the petition that Raghavji filed.
The complainant's father said that his son was not "mentally stable," a chronic drunkard, and had a "habit of making false accusations against people in high positions in society."
He had already made untrue accusations against someone. According to the father's testimony, "My son is trying to blackmail the petitioner since he is in the wrong hands of leaders of the petitioner's political opponents.
A solitary court of justice 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
According to Sanjay Dwivedi of the MP high court, who also took the father of the complainant's statement into consideration. Notably, the complainant was reserved for over three years, and astonishingly, it wasn't until he had left the petitioner's home and felt humiliated that he finally came forward.
"The complaint was made after hand-in-glove with the leaders of rival parties," the court ruled on Friday in quashing the FIR. "Therefore, it is nothing but the assimilation of personal and political animosities, more precisely, a politically-oriented animosity, which makes the petitioner's prosecution malicious," it added.
The ruling states that the complainant's statement that he planned and created the CD himself casts doubt on his behavior and suggests that he was somehow determined to gather evidence against the petitioner in order to utilize it against the petitioner in the future.
"Since it is a case of consent and that the prosecution of the petitioner is malicious, I find that no offense under Section 377 of the IPC is made out. As a result, I grant the petition."Accordingly, the court decision further stated, "FIR registered at policestation Habibganj, district Bhopal, against the petitioner (Raghavji) for the offense punishable under Sections 377,506,34 of the IPC ishereby dismissed.
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