Mumbai The Bombay high court (HC) recently rejected the pre-arrest bail application of a woman who has been booked for allegedly posting explicit photographs of her ex-boyfriend on Instagram and tagging his daughter’s school page.
While hearing the anticipatory bail application of the woman, the single-judge bench of justice Bharati Dangre was informed that the woman was misconceived and falsely implicated in the case. The HC was also assured that being in the medical profession, the woman would not abscond.
The woman was in a consensual relationship with a married man since 2010. However, things turned sour and the man decided to break it off in 2020. After the break up, the woman allegedly created a fake Instagram account and posted pictures of the man kissing and tagged his daughter’s school. She even emailed his nude and compromising pictures to his wife.
After a complaint against her in May, she was booked under sections 448, 294-B, 500, 504, 506, 427, 509 of the Indian Penal Code, along with sections 66 (C), 66 (D), 67, 67 (A) of the Information Technology Act. As her first pre-arrest bail application was rejected by the lower court on August 3, she approached the HC with her plea.
Advocate Shehzad Naqvi, on behalf of the complainant, opposed the application stating that his client’s daughter had to face humiliation in school and his life was too subsequently ruined. The bench was told that there was a criminal conspiracy against his client which needed to be investigated with custodial interrogation and if the woman was given protection, she would try to harm the daughter.
Additional public prosecutor Swapnil Wagh for the police concurred with the observations of the lower court and opposed the application too. He informed the court that if there was a need to arrest the woman, the police would follow the procedure prescribed under the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) by issuing her a notice under section 41 (A).
The court based its order on the submissions of the investigating officer that the woman had not cooperated with the investigation and her computer and mobile handset were yet to be recovered.