Varun Hiremath The Delhi High Court on Friday granted interim protection from arrest to the 28-year-old Mumbai-based journalist Varun Hiremath in the rape case registered against him by the Delhi Police.
A single-judge bench of the court made the interim protection from arrest subject to Hiremath’s joining investigation. The lower court had earlier declined to grant him the anticipatory bail.
Hiremath, an anchor with ET Now, has been on the run since February 23 when the FIR was registered against him under IPC sections 376 (punishment for offence of rape), 342 (punishment for wrongful confinement) and 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult modesty of a woman) at Chanakyapuri police station.
The woman, in her complaint and statement before the magistrate, alleged she was raped by Hiremath at a five-star hotel in Chanakyapuri on February 20.
The FIR states that the woman and Hiremath met at a cafe in Khan Market, from where the accused asked her to come to his hotel room, where multiple incidents of rape, violence and sexual assault allegedly took place. While dismissing his anticipatory bail plea, the court had observed that consent cannot be implied from a victim’s previous sexual experiences with the accused.
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