The Supreme Court on Tuesday (August 25) directed journalist and former Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal to surrender within two weeks, refusing to exempt him from doing so while considering his appeal against his conviction and 10-year jail sentence in a 2013 sexual assault case.

A bench of Justice Alok Aradhe said Tejpal's appeal against the Bombay high court judgment would be taken up for further hearing on September 22, provided he submits a certificate confirming his surrender before the authorities.

Tejpal had moved the Supreme Court seeking exemption from the requirement of surrendering after the Bombay high court overturned his acquittal and convicted him in the case on charges of rape, sexual harassment and use of criminal force against a woman, who was his junior colleague at the time.

According to Hindustan Times, senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Aman Lekhi, appearing for Tejpal, argued that there was no legal requirement for an accused to surrender before his criminal appeal could be listed. Sibal also relied on the Bombay high court’s August 6 judgment, which gave Tejpal four weeks to surrender, and underlined that the case was 13 years old and that he was now a senior citizen with strong roots in society.

“There is no legal condition that he must surrender before the appeal is listed,” Sibal said, adding that there was no purpose in sending Tejpal to jail for a few days before his appeal could be taken up.

“There is no point to send him to jail for five days,” he said.

The Supreme Court bench, however, said the question of exempting Tejpal from surrender could not be considered in isolation from the nature of the offence and the punishment imposed by the high court.

“We have to look into the nature of the offence and the sentence,” observed the bench, noting that Sibal had also argued that the high court had reversed a trial court acquittal.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Goa government, opposed Tejpal’s plea. He reasoned that the Bombay high court had suspended the operation of its judgment only to enable Tejpal to approach the Supreme Court with an exemption plea and not to permit him to bypass the requirement of surrender altogether.

“This court will have to go into the merits of the case, besides the technical arguments, in so far as the issue of deciding whether the appellant deserves this exemption or not,” Mehta contended. 

He also stressed the gravity of the allegations, describing it as a case of aggravated rape.

Sibal objected to the characterisation, saying: “It is not a case of rape at all.”

Lekhi, on his part, argued that the rules governing surrender did not categorise offences in a manner that could operate as an automatic bar to exemption.

The bench nevertheless held that the issue of surrender had to be resolved before the appeal could proceed further.

“How much time you need to surrender?” the bench asked Sibal. “Two weeks,” he replied.

The court then rejected Tejpal’s application with the direction to surrender within two weeks.

The order came a day after the Supreme Court declined to list Tejpal's appeal without first deciding his application seeking exemption from surrender. The court had said that the exemption plea would have to be considered before the appeal against the conviction could be taken up.

The case stems from allegations that Tejpal sexually assaulted a junior woman colleague twice in an elevator during the Tehelka THiNK festival in Goa in November 2013. A trial court acquitted him in May 2021.

However, on August 6, the Bombay high court overturned the acquittal and convicted Tejpal of two counts of aggravated rape, sentencing him to 10 years' imprisonment and imposing a fine.