Mumbai: A sub-inspector (SI) from Navi Mumbai Police has approached the Bombay High Court seeking an anticipatory bail, as he is apprehending his arrest in an alleged rape case against him by a lady constable. SI Amit Shelar petitioned a division bench of Justices Indrajit Mahanty and Sadhana Jadhav after a sessions court denied him anticipatory bail.

The bench, however, asked Shelar to approach a single-judge bench of the HC, assigned to hear anticipatory bail applications. Shelar, named in an FIR, registered in November last, for raping a colleague, a lady constable, in March 2017 after spiking her cold drink. He is also accused of having recorded the incident and later blackmailing and threatening the lady cop of circulating the clips.

Shelar bla­ck­mailed me with the video clips. Based on the videos, he raped me several times,” the lady cop, stated before police. Shelar refuted the allegations claiming he was falsely implicated. He instead accused the constable’s husband, for deliberately filing the FIR, as he disapproved of the friendship between them. He argued since the victim was in police force, she must be aware of the rules. Accordingly, she could have reported the matter to seniors. He spoke of the 20-month delay in lodging the FIR.