Court discharges Shilpa Shetty in Richard Gere Kissing Case

On Monday, a Mumbai Court discharged Shilpa Shetty, who had been accused of obscenity & indecency in an incident where co-accused Richard Gere had publicly kissed her. The incident happened during a promotional event in Rajasthan in 2007. A total of three cases were filed in 2007 in Rajasthan & Uttar Pradesh against Shilpa for publicly kissing the Hollywood star & AIDS awareness campaigner.

After perusing the complaint that gave rise to the case, the Metropolitan Magistrate Ketaki Chavan deduced that the actress was a victim of the element of the alleged act of accused number one, Richard Gere.

Once the police report & documents were presented, the Magistrate was satisfied that the charges against Shilpa Shetty were groundless. Hence, the actress was discharged from the offences.

The Order observed that “Not a single element of any of the alleged offence is being satisfied in the complaint. Moreover, none of the papers annexed with the final report discloses act of present accused so as to bring her within the purview of Section 34 of IPC (common intention)".

After the incident, a complaint was filed before a Judicial Magistrate First Class in Mundawar, Rajasthan seeking registration of an FIR against Shilpa Shetty & Richard Gere, which was allowed.

The FIR booked the accused under Sections 292, 293, 294 (obscenity) of the Indian Penal Code, along with provisions of the Information Technology & Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act.

Shilpa Shetty’s plea to transfer the case to Mumbai was allowed by the Supreme Court in 2017, after which the complaint & the transfer case was being heard by the Metropolitan Magistrate at Ballard Pier, Mumbai.

The actress filed for discharge under Section 239 (discharge after considering police report & documents) & Section 245 (discharge after considering evidence) of the Code of Criminal Procedure through lawyer Madhukar Dalvi.

Shilpa’s applications stated that the accusation against her is “only that she did not protest when she was kissed by the co-accused, Richard Gere, which by no stretch of imagination made her a conspirator or perpetrator of the crime.

Her application under Section 239 was allowed, while the one under 245 was rejected as the summons triable case had no provision for discharge.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the LatestLaws staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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