High court grants bail to Steel City hotelier, 6 others in sex scandal case

Ranchi: The Jharkhand high court granted bail to Jamshedpur hotelier Rajiv Singh Duggal and six others on Monday. Duggal and other prominent businessmen are accused in a sex scandal that rocked the Steel City during the lockdown earlier in April.
The court of Justice Rongon Mukhopadhayay had heard the bail applications of the accused on July 2 and reserved the order, which was pronounced in court through video conferencing on Monday.
Besides Duggal, who is the owner of Hotel Alcor, his manager Dhananjay Kumar Singh, businessmen Raj Kumar Agarwal, Rahul Kumar Agarwal, Sharad Poddar, Deepak Agarwal and railway contractor Rajesh ‘Laddu’ Mangotia have been released on bail by the high court.
The accused were nabbed from Hotel Alcor in April after police received a tip-off. A lady from Kolkata was also apprehended during the raid.
The police registered a case against the accused under the Immoral Trafficking Act as well as for violating lockdown guidelines framed by the Union ministry of home affairs. The police have alleged that a sex racket was being run at the hotel in the garb of a spa.
Defence advocates had argued that their clients were not involved in any sex scandal and have been framed in the case by the police. At best, it was a case for violation of the lockdown guidelines, the counsels had argued. The lady apprehended in the case was a visitor who was stuck during the lockdown and could not return to her home owing to lack of means of transport, they argued.
Duggal’s plea for bail was on the ground that he was not present at the spot. His advocate had argued that Duggal was unaware of his hotel being used by the other accused persons as a meeting place during the lockdown.