The Bombay High Court on Saturday rejected the pleas filed by businessman Raj Kundra and his associate Ryan Thorpe challenging their arrest and subsequent remand orders against them in a case of alleged production and streaming of pornographic content on apps.
A single bench presided over by Justice A S Gadkari rejected their applications, saying that the duo’s remand by a magistrate to police custody and the subsequent judicial custody was within the conformity of law and did not require interference.
In their petitions, Kundra, husband of actor Shilpa Shetty, and Thorpe had termed their arrest as illegal as the mandatory provision of issuing notice under section 41A of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) was not followed.
The duo, in their plea, sought the high court to order for their immediate release and quash two orders passed by a magistrate after their arrest remanding them in police custody.
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Earlier, the police had said that a notice was issued prior to his arrest but Mr Kundra had refused to accept it. The police argued that the refusal “implies the petitioner refused to co-operate”.
While Kundra was arrested on July 19, Thorpe, who was employed as the IT head in Kundra’s firm, was arrested on July 20 for involvement in the production of pornography. Kundra, however, has argued that the content in question was not pornography and that similar material was available on OTT platforms. They are currently in judicial custody.
The police have claimed that the duo deleted messages from a WhatsApp group while a police search was on in connection with the case. This amounted to destroying evidence, they have said.
They also said that they had found a WhatsApp group on Kundra’s mobile phone that contained chats with other accused and a PowerPoint presentation with marketing strategies and projections for Hotshots, the mobile app via which the businessman is accused of distributing the videos.
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