Sessions Court Refuses Anticipatory Bail To Sherlyn Chopra In Porn Film Case

The Sessions Court at Mumbai has rejected the anticipatory bail application filed by actress Sherlyn Chopra in the alleged pornographic films case involving businessman and actress Shilpa Shetty's husband Raj Kundra and a few others.

Chopra had approached the Sessions Court apprehending arrest in the case "without notice under section 41A of the Criminal Procedure Court" days after the Mumbai Police served her a notice to record her statement under section 160 of the CrPC.

Chopra's lawyer argued before the court of Additional Sessions Judge Sonali Agrawal that other accused in the case had been arrested without service of notice under Section 41A of CrPC and Chopra apprehended a similar treatment. The lawyer added that he had represented one of the accused, Umesh Kamat, who too was arrested in a similar fashion.

Raj Kundra too has raised the same issue before the Bombay High Court, seeking to quash the remand orders passed by the Esplanade Metropolitan Magistrate.

According to Chopra, she was apprehensive that she may be implicated in the case without knowledge of the facts of the case and principles of natural justice would entail that she gets a fair opportunity to appear before the investigation officer and be allowed to co-operate in the investigation without fear of arrest.

It was also submitted that since the entire case seemed to be in electronic form, her custody would not be required and the investigation can be done by examining the concerned device.

In response, the police submitted that they had come across Chopra's opinion on the media and social media where she had raised grievances against Raj Kundra, therefore she was called to record her statement, "in order to get strong evidence against the arrested accused in the case," she, however, filed an anticipatory bail application.

The police also told the court that the crime committed may be bigger than it seemed when the FIR was registered. They added that the possibility of the number of victims being more and that the police was trying to find out the victims in the case.

A case was lodged in February for making and distributing porn films through an application under sections 354(C) (Voyeurism), 292 (sale of obscene content), 420(cheating) of the IPC, and Sections 67, 67A (transmission of sexually explicit material) of the IT Act and the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act. So far, 11 accused have been arrested in the case including Raj Kundra and Ryan Thorpe, IT expert of one of Kundra's companies.