Cara Tejpal has rejected claims that the complainant was a family friend who saw her father as a father figure. Her statement comes after the Goa High Court convicted Tarun Tejpal, reviving scrutiny of the case narrative.
Tarun Tejpal’s daughter Cara has rejected as “an absolute untruth” the “narrative” that the complainant in the rape case against her father was a childhood friend of hers and her sister, and that she therefore regarded Tejpal as a “father figure”.
In a statement on Wednesday, Cara said the claim was false and said the issue had already been examined during the trial before the Sessions Court in Mapusa.
Her statement came after the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court last week set aside Tejpal’s acquittal, convicted him and sentenced him to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment.
“Yes, it is true that my father and the complainant’s father briefly worked in the same office in the 90s. What is untrue is that they were close comrades or that we were family friends to any degree,” she said.
Cara said she had not even known of the “complainant’s existence” until she was an adult, and claimed that the complainant was older than both her and her elder sister. She also said the “father figure” characterisation had been tested during the trial before the Sessions Court at Mapusa.
Tejpal, the former editor-in-chief of Tehelka magazine, was arrested by Goa Police in November 2013 after the complainant, then a junior journalist, accused him of sexually assaulting her inside a lift at a luxury hotel in Goa during the magazine’s annual ThinkFest event.
A sessions court in 2021 acquitted him of all charges, saying the prosecution had failed to establish the charges beyond reasonable doubt.