Supreme Court to hear plea to cancel pre-arrest bail of Rahul Raj Singh

The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear a special leave petition (SLP) filed by parents of deceased actress Pratyusha Banerjee, seeking cancellation of the anticipatory bail granted to the main accused Rahul Raj Singh in her death case.

A vacation bench of Justices A.M. Sapre and Ashok Bhushan posted the SLP for hearing on May 30 on a mention made by counsel Vipin Nair and P.B. Suresh for urgent listing. The SLP challenges the Bombay high court order on April 25 granting anticipatory bail to Rahul.

Pratyusha, who won national acclaim by starring in the television serial Balika Vadhu, was found dead in her apartment on April 1 under mysterious circumstances and the police has started preliminary investigations on the same. Her parents strongly feel that Pratyusha’s death is not a case of suicide, but that she has been murdered by Rahul and his other partners in crime. There were several deep injury marks on the body of the deceased.

In their SLP they said the sessions court had correctly rejected the anticipatory bail of Rahul in view of the strong opposition by the prosecution. However, despite the said rejection, the police deliberately did not arrest Rahul for over a week, before he approached the Bombay high court, they said. It is the apprehension of the aggrieved parents that valuable piece of evidence may have been tampered with by Rahul.

The SLP says the high court erroneously granted anticipatory bail to the prime accused despite the prosecution raising as much as 15 grounds of opposition by the Special Public Prosecutor.

They contended the impugned order is palpably erroneous and militates against the settled legal position and in the present case, the police should not have been denied permission for custodial interrogation of Rahul to arrive at the truth.