A Delhi court has convicted Rajiv Khosla, a former president of the Delhi High Court Bar Association, for the assault of a woman lawyer more than 27 years after the incident.
The incident took place on August 5, 1994, against the complainant, Sujata Kohli, who was a lawyer at Tis Hazari Courts in the 1990s, and retired last year as a District & Sessions Judge. As per the complaint, on July 29, 1994, Khosla, who was then the secretary of the Delhi Bar Association (DBA), asked Sujata Kohli to join a seminar on proposed family courts but she said she was busy, in response she was threatened with withdrawal of all facilities provided by the DBA and dispossession of her seat.
Kohli filed a suit to stop it from happening but despite that, her table and chair were removed from its spot. Kohli’s suit was to carry out an inspection of the spot on August 5, 1994, when Khosla along with a mob of lawyers allegedly surrounded her. Khosla then pulled her hair, dragged her, twisted her arms, used abuses, and threatened her, Kohli alleged in her complaint.
Police registered the case on August 8, 1994 at Sabzi Mandi police station. It was in June 1995 that investigation was completed. Since Kohli was not satisfied with the police probe, she had already moved a private complaint to prosecute the case. The private complaint and police case were later clubbed.
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Central District, Tis Hazari Court, Gajender Singh Nagar held Khosla guilty for offences punishable under IPC Sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 506(i) (criminal intimidation). “Due to this marathon cross-examination running over 10 years, certain inconsistencies, improvements and minor discrepancies are bound to happen,” said the court.
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