New Delhi: The Supreme Court has stayed an Allahabad High Court order granting interim relief to a government counsel accused of rape.
The Additional Chief Standing Counsel in the Lucknow bench of the High Court, Shailendra Singh Chauhan, has been accused of sexual harassment and rape by a Delhi-based lawyer for offences under Sections 328 (Causing hurt by means of poison, etc., with intent to commit an offence), 354A (Sexual harassment) and 376 (Rape) of IPC.
The High Court of Allahabad had granted Chauhan interim relief from arrest against which an appeal was filed in the Supreme Court.
The bench of Justices RF Nariman and Navin Sinha, however, did not interfere with the High Court’s order which had directed the competent court to enable the investigating agency to recover relevant material connected with the case.
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The bench passed the following order: “There shall be stay of the operation of the impugned order except the following. As an interim measure, the competent court is hereby directed to pass necessary orders on the pending application so that the investigating agency may assume possession of the relevant material which may have a bearing upon the case. As an abundant caution, we provide that an appropriate order to this effect may be passed so that there is no tampering with the evidence of the case.”
-India Legal Bureau