Mumbai: A special women’s court here today reserved order till June 1 on discharge plea filed by Bollywood singer Ankit Tiwari in a case of alleged rape. Arguments on discharge plea concluded before Judge K S Shende who reserved order.
Tiwari was arrested in May 2014 on rape charges and was granted bail a month later. Stating that his relationship with the complainant woman was “consensual”, Tiwari said in his application that her claim to have never drunk liquor can’t be true because she worked in an advertising industry.
Tiwari’s lawyer Mahesh Vaswani pointed out that the allegations levelled by the complainant in her statement to police did not match with the allegations mentioned in the subsequent first information report. The victim claimed that she had never consumed liquor but the “fact remains that the victim was working in an advertising company related to entertainment industry and it cannot be believed that she had never consumed alcohol”, Tiwari’s application said.
Tiwari said his relationship with her was “consensual” and denied the allegation that he had threatened to make public a video clip of her. “This is totally false”, he said. The complainant alleged that Tiwari had raped her repeatedly between October 2012 and December 2013 after promising to marry her but did not keep the promise.
Tiwari’s brother Ankur was also arrested for allegedly threatening the woman. The singer was booked by police under IPC sections 376 (rape), 493 (cohabitation caused by a man deceitfully inducing a belief of lawful marriage) and 506 (2) (criminal intimidation) of Indian Penal Code.
The 24-year-old singer is known for the hit song “Sun Raha Hai Na” from the film “Aashiqui 2”.
