Malayalam filmmaker Ranjith Balakrishnan was relieved from an unnatural sex case on Friday after the Karnataka High Court quashed the complaint filed against him by an aspiring male actor, Bar and Bench reported.
The single bench of Justice SR Krishna Kumar, in a ruling, cancelled the case after observing that the complainant’s claims were false. The Judge also questioned the delay in filing the case regarding an incident that took place in 2012, the report added.
The court observed that the Taj Hotel near Bengaluru Airport, where the alleged incident supposedly occurred, only opened in 2016. The bench highlighted a glaring factual inaccuracy in the case and quashed it.
“The complaint, on the face of it, is false. I don’t even say prima facie, as the Taj Hotel near Bengaluru International Airport started its operation only in 2016, this is in the public domain, it is four years after the incident. Therefore, the vivid narration at the Taj Hotel is absolutely false. This is thus a canard,” Bar and Bench quoted the court as saying.
“The complaint is registered in the year 2024, and the alleged incident is said to have happened in the year 2012. Therefore, it has taken 12 years for the complainant to register the complaint. The delay of 12 years is also left completely unexplained. Therefore, on all those factors, it becomes a classic case of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus,” the bench added.
What is the case?
As per the details, the youth had alleged that Ranjith was engaged in unnatural sex with him in 2012 at the Taj Hotel near Bengaluru International Airport.
The complainant alleged that Ranjith invited him to the fourth floor of the Taj Hotel and provided a detailed description of the events.
Based on the complaint, Ranjith was booked by Kasaba police in Kozhikode in August 2024 for offences under Section 377 (unnatural offences) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 66E (punishment for violation of privacy) of the Information Technology Act, 2000.
But then, it was later transferred to the Karnataka Police.
Not the first case:
Earlier, too, there were allegations against Ranjith by his colleagues. Even Bengali actor Sreelekha Mitra had filed a complaint against Ranjith. In her complaint, she had alleged that Ranjith misbehaved with her in 2009 on the pretext of a movie discussion in Kochi.
Ranjith Balakrishnan, Karnataka High Court, unnatural sex case, unnatural sex, Taj Hotel, Bengaluru Airport
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