Today, the Kerala High Court has reserved orders on the Petitions filed by the prosecution and the Victim seeking transfer of the Actor’s Sexual assault case to other court. The Victim was represented by the Special Public Prosecutor Suman Chakravarthy and Senior Advocate S Sreekumar.
A single bench of Kerala High Court, Justice V G Arun has extended the stay of the trial proceedings till the pronouncement of orders.
During the matter came up before the bench, the Senior Advocate has submitted that the victim was forced to undergo an ordeal of cross-examination for about 9-10 days as irrelevant & unnecessary questions were raised maligning her character.
The prosecutor also submitted that the trial judge remained a ‘mute spectator’ when the victim was harassed and intimidated by the lawyers of the accused during cross-examination. Although, there was ‘manifest bias’ on the part of the presiding officer, the trial judge had directly handed over the laboratory report to the accused, without giving its copy to the prosecution, alleged the Senior Advocate Sreekumar.
At this view point, Justice Arun asked why no objection was taken to the approach of the judge earlier and why the orders passed by the trial court were not challenged before.
The senior counsel has asserted that the victim and the witnessed have faced harassment at every stage of their trials. He has submitted that the prosecution tried to adjust to the maximum and to ensure to go along with the court and that it was no longer possible.
Further, the bench asked if the victim can seek transfer when the judge was specially assigned the case considering her request for a women judge.
Therefore the transfer application filed before the Kerala High Court has stated that “The victim was aggrieved by the biased and hostile attitude of the presiding judge”. Hence the High Court specially transferred this case to the Trial Court at the request of the victim for a women judge to try the case.
