Delhi High Court grants anticipatory bail to St. Stephens professor accused of sexual harassment

The Delhi High Court granted anticipatory bail to Assistant Professor Satish Kumar of St. Stephens college. Kumar had been accused of molesting a female student and his plea for anticipatory bail had earlier been rejected by the Additional Sessions Judge on June 23rd..Justice Indermeet Kaur stayed the arrest till the next date of hearing on August 17th. She further directed for the police authorities to file a status report and ordered for the ‘petitioner to co-operate with the investigation.’ Justice Kaur rejected student’s plea to restrain Kumar from meeting the complainant and tampering with the investigation. The Bench termed the prayer as ‘unnecessary’..Kumar’s lawyer, Nitin Kumar Swaroop, informed the High Court that the allegations made by the student were baseless and most of them arose from her ‘frustration and inability’ to complete her PhD coursework within time. Kumar’s lawyer also submitted that the complaint was false as some days after filing of the complaint [when her PhD work was progressing fine], the girl went to the principal of the college and requested for the case to not be treated as a sexual harassment issue..The counsel appearing for the student submitted that certain conversations between the student, Kumar and St. Stephens’ principal had been taped. These tapes had already been submitted to the police. She further argued that the conversations clearly indicated that the accused was trying to influence the principal and divert the course of the matter. In fact, the primary reason for the trial court to reject bail was that Kumar happened to be an influential person in the University.