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Mumbai Porn Racket: Bombay HC to hear Gehana Vasisth’s ABA on Thursday
MUMBAI: The Bombay High Court hearing the Anticipatory Bail Application of actor Gehana Vasisth has adjourned the matter to Thursday, 26 August.
Vasisth aka Vandana R Tiwari approached the Bombay High Court seeking pre-arrest bail in the porn film racket case after the Dindoshi Sessions Court in suburban Mumbai rejected her anticipatory bail plea in the FIR lodged under Sections 354C (outraging modesty of woman), 292, 293 (sale of obscene material) under the Indian Penal Code, Sections 66E, 67, 67A (transmission of sexually explicit material) under the Information Technology Act and provisions of the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act.
The FIR was registered by the Malwani police station in Mumbai after they received a complaint stating that Vasisth who was director of porn films, threatened, coerced and lured women with money to act in “obscene film videos”.
The case was transferred to the Mumbai crime branch, which has formed a SIT to investigate all the FIRs in the Mumbai pornography racket.
Along with Vasisth, three others Ajay Shrimant, Abhijit Harishchandra and Prince Kashyap have been named as accused in the FIR.
The complainant has alleged that she was coerced to act in obscene videos for Vasisth’s films which were uploaded on the mobile application Hotshot owned by a company of Raj Kundra, HotShots Digital.
Vasisth’s advocate argued before Justice SK Shinde on Tuesday that the complainant had previously acted in several web series.
“In the present case, the web series was shot over two months. Hence, the complainant was very well aware of what was being shot. She acted throughout and accepted the payment towards the contract and also promoted the series,” Yende argued.
He further submitted that Vasisth had been jailed for over four months during which her bank accounts and laptop and mobiles were seized.
“Whatever could have been recovered from Vasisth had already been recovered when she was in custody. Also, a second FIR was registered and the police interrogated her,” said Yende. He said that Vasisth suffered from a heart attack while she was in judicial custody earlier this year.
Vasisth is seeking pre-arrest bail in the third FIR registered against her recently.
After hearing his arguments, Justice Shinde inquired with the prosecution why the issues leading to the third FIR could not be investigated in the earlier FIRs when everything had been recovered from Vasisth.
Public Prosecutor Prajakta Shinde replied that she needed time to get details of the investigation from the investigating officer (IO). The court posted the matter for hearing on August 26.
Vasisth stated in her application that the Mumbai Police sought to arrest her in a third FIR when she had already been in custody for four months in the previous two FIRs.
“There is no need for custodial interrogation”, Vasisth stated in the application. She further submitted that she had been subjected to three different FIRs under the same cause of action within a very short proximity of time and on the basis of the same occurrence.
She assured the court that she was already under two stringent bail conditions of the Sessions Court which had granted her bail in the earlier two FIRs.
“Hence the applicant (Vasisth) can be thoroughly investigated without being taken into custody” her application stated.
She further assured that she was ready and willing to co-operate with the investigative agencies as she had been doing so far.