Raj Kundra comes out of Arthur Road jail after being granted bail by Mumbai court in connection with pornography case, in Mumbai, Tuesday, September 21, 2021. (PTI)Businessman Raj Kundra, who was booked last year by the Mumbai police in connection with alleged creation and uploading of pornographic films on mobile applications, has filed an application for discharge from the case.
Kundra, the husband of actor Shilpa Shetty, was arrested in July 2021 and granted bail in September by a metropolitan magistrate’s court. In his plea, he denied any link with the sale of pornographic material and said he had invested in Armsprime Media Pvt Ltd (AMPL) but it was a matter of record that it had nothing to do with the pornographic content.
His plea further says that the first chargesheet did not have any material against him and the supplementary one does not state that victims have been coerced or threatened by Kundra or the IT head of his company, Ryan Thorpe, who was also arrested.
“That none of the artists (clients of AMPL) ever raised any grievance or any alarms with regards to the so-called filming and broadcasting of erotic contents,” the discharge plea states. The plea states that the material part of the probe does not indicate any prima facie case against him, sufficient to frame charges and hence his discharge plea should be allowed.
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Kundra was granted bail in September with the court observing that the “element of inducement which is the prime ingredient of cheating appears to be missing from the case of the prosecution”. A supplementary chargesheet running into 4,000 pages was filed against him.
Kundra was booked under relevant sections of Indian Penal Code (IPC), Information Technology Act and Indecent Representation of Women (Prevention) Act.