Karnataka High Court quashes sexual assault case filed by youth against filmmaker Ranjith

The Karnataka High Court on Friday quashed an unnatural sex case filed against Malayalam filmmaker Ranjith Balakrishnan by an aspiring male actor.

Justice SR Krishna Kumar allowed the petition filed by Ranjith to quash the case.

A copy of the ruling is awaited.

Senior Advocate Prabhuling Navadgi represented Balakrishnan today and asserted that it was a false case.

He pointed out that the Taj Hotel near Bengaluru Airport, where the alleged incident supposedly occurred, opened only in 2016, four years after the alleged event, highlighting a glaring factual inaccuracy.

This aspect of the matter had also earlier led another single-judge, Justice M Nagaprasanna, to stay criminal proceedings against the filmmaker.

At the time, the Court had also noted that there was a 12-year delay in filing the complaint and there was no justification for the same, thus bringing into question the credibility of the allegations.

The case arose from a complaint by an aspiring actor against Ranjith, accusing the filmmaker of engaging in unnatural sex with him (complainant) in 2012 at the Taj Hotel near Bengaluru International Airport.

The complainant claimed he was invited to the fourth floor of the Taj hotel, where the alleged incident occurred. He also provided a detailed description of the events.

Ranjith was booked 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.

He then approached the High Court with a petition to quash the first information report (FIR), which has been allowed today.

The petition was filed through advocate Joseph Anthony.