Soonawala bail upheld

"We have gone through the order and do not find any legal and valid ground for interference,” stated a division bench of Chief Justice of India P. Sathasivam and Justice Ranjan Gogoi of the Supreme Court (SC) while dismissing the special leave petition of the Maharashtra state challenging the anticipatory bail granted to Dr Rustum Soonawala by the Bombay High Court (BHC) on June 11 last, reported Sunday Mumbai Mirror in its issue of July 28, 2013. Justice Roshan Dalvi of the BHC had granted anticipatory bail to the general practitioner accused of raping a 26-year-old patient whom he had been treating for tuberculosis.

Dr Rustum Soonawalla: relief to continue

Soonawala’s advocate Aabad Ponda argued in the BHC that the doctor was being framed, that he was willing to provide blood and other forensic related samples for tests to verify that he was innocent. "Only a person confident of his innocence will stick his neck out. For, if the tests imply complicity, he will only end in tightening the noose around his neck,” Ponda had submitted. Also, with the public sentiment heavily weighted against men, following the grisly gang rape of a young woman in Delhi, "one needed to see that people could falsely implicate men in such cases.”
Observing that since only the medical tests remained in the Soonawala matter, for which custodial interrogation was not required, the BHC had granted relief to the accused. The Bombay Police challenged the BHC order on the ground that it would set a precedent and every rape accused would insist on a medical report being called for before proceeding with the case. The State then approached the SC, but failed there as well, the newspaper reported.