Tehelka case: Tarun Tejpal gets CCTV footage from hotel, to use it as evidence

Panaji: A local court on Wednesday handed CCTV footage at the five-star hotel in north Goa to Tehelka founder-editor Tarun Tejpal, who is accused of raping a junior colleague in the hotel lift last November.

"We have received the CCTV footage....We will use it as evidence to fight the case," said Tejpal's lawyer Sandip Kapoor.

Chief Judicial Magistrate Anuja Prabhudesai earlier in the day ordered the court staff to hand over a copy of footage to Tejpal by 5 PM.

Kapoor dismissed the talk that the footage at the hotel in Bambolim would be made public through the media.

Tejpal, currently lodged in Sada sub-jail in Vasco, had applied to the court seeking the footage, which is part of the evidence cited by the Goa police's crime branch in the chargesheet against him.

Tejpal had yesterday accused the police of suppressing the footage which, he said, could reveal the truth.

"In my first and only press note of November 22, 2013 I had urged the police to obtain, examine and release the CCTV footage so that the accurate version of events stands clearly revealed," he had said.

"I said this at a time, from Delhi, when I had neither accessed nor seen the footage. But since I was the man on the spot I knew the truth," he said.

The chargesheet claimed that Tejpal had admitted to the crime and that the allegations against him were corroborated by the CCTV footage, emails exchanged with the victim and the statement of the witnesses, etc.

The police, however, made it clear, that "there is no CCTV footage of the incidents inside the lift".