The Karnataka High Court has issued a stay on the ongoing investigation into the sexual harassment allegations against well-known Malayalam film director Ranjith. The court intervened after determining significant inconsistencies in the accusations, specifically related to the location and timing of the alleged incident.
The complaint, lodged by an aspiring actor, accused Ranjith of sexually assaulting him in 2012 at the Taj Hotel near Bengaluru International Airport. However, Justice M Nagaprasanna noted a critical factual error in the complaint: the Taj Hotel did not open until 2016, four years after the date of the alleged incident. This discrepancy led the judge to declare the complaint “demonstrably false” and indicative of a deliberate falsehood.
Further complicating the complainant’s case is the extensive delay in filing the charges. It took 12 years for the complainant to register the FIR, a delay that the court found “entirely unexplained” and problematic. Justice Nagaprasanna remarked that such a delay casts further doubt on the credibility of the charges, citing the principle of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus—false in one thing, false in everything.
The FIR against Ranjith was initially filed under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which pertains to unnatural offences, and Section 66E of the Information Technology Act, 2000. During the court proceedings, Ranjith’s defense, led by senior advocate Prabhuling Navadgi and advocate Joseph Anthony, successfully argued for a stay on further investigations.
