The submissions were made by senior advocate Rebecca John, who represented the women wrestlers, as the court heard arguments on framing of charges against Singh and suspended WFI assistant secretary Vinod Tomar.
Each victim has told the court that they had to free themselves “from the clutches of the accused”, the Rouse Avenue court was told by six women wrestlers, who alleged that they were sexually harassed by then Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) chief and BJP Lok Sabha MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh.
The submissions were made by senior advocate Rebecca John, who represented the women wrestlers, as the court heard arguments on framing of charges against Singh and suspended WFI assistant secretary Vinod Tomar.
John submitted, “The wrestlers told the court that they were touched inappropriately under the pretext of checking their breath. If that is not force, what else is?” She told the court that intimidation was also involved along with sexual assault and called the two offences “interlinked”.
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John said that in each case the victims faced discomfort, which emerged out of lack of consent. “Is the accused a doctor…why was he checking their breath,” she asked.
Reading out complaints of the six wrestlers, John told the court that in many of these, the wrestlers had mentioned that they had tried to push away the accused. This, she said, amounted to use of force and, therefore, an offence was made out under IPC Section 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty).
During earlier hearings on framing of charges, Rajiv Mohan, representing Bhushan, had argued that only “hugging” did not amount to sexual assault, and thus did not form a case under Section 354.
Stating that there was “corroborative evidence” against Bhushan, John said, “There were six complainants and six witnesses…many of them directly saw Bhushan.” Relying on Section 6 of Indian Evidence Act, she said that even statements of witnesses who didn’t directly see Bhushan should be considered as corroborative.
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John cited the Krishan Kumar Malik judgment and argued that ‘Res Gestae’ evidence, where Bhushan wasn’t clearly seen by the witnesses, should be considered admissible, as there was no interval and the complainants immediately told witnesses about the incident, which rules out fabrication.
Earlier, Bhushan’s counsel had argued that the Delhi court did not have the territorial jurisdiction since some of the incidents took place abroad.
The matter will now be heard in ACMM Harjeet Singh Jaspal’s court on September 1.
© The Indian Express (P) Ltd
First published on: 27-08-2023 at 03:23 IST
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