Peepli Live co-director Mahmood Farooqui was convicted by a Delhi court on Saturday in a rape case filed by an American woman.
The 35-year-old researcher had alleged that Farooqi raped her in a rented accommodation at Sukhdev Vihar in Delhi.
The 35-year-old woman, a student at Columbia University in New York, had told the police that she was raped by the filmmaker at his Sukhdev Vihar house in southern Delhi on 28 March last year.
In her complaint to Delhi Police, she had alleged that Farooqui had raped her when she had gone to meet him subsequently for help on her research.
“The amendment to the criminal law in 2013 introduced forced oral sex. This is perhaps one of the first cases of forced oral sex, which shows two things: that there was a crime for which we did not earlier have an offence named — now it has been recognised as rape. We’re also very happy to see that the court relied on very credible evidence that the woman gave,” Advocate Vrinda Grover, counsel for the complainant, told The Indian Express.
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She alleged Farooqui raped her when she had gone to meet him to get help for her research work. She claimed to have met Farooqui in Varanasi where she had gone to collect information.
The complainant had alleged that she “did not resist” the rape primarily because she feared she would face the same consequences as that of the victim of the Nirbhaya. During the final arguments, Grover had told the court that the complainant knew that if she resisted, the “consequences would be worse”.
“She has stated before this court, during the recording of the evidence, that she was reminded of the documentary of the Nirbhaya case, where the rapist had said that if the victim had not struggled, she would have survived. The accused (Farooqui) applied force and pushed her down. She then froze. She knew if she resisted the rape upon her, the consequence would be worse,” Grover argued.
A case under IPC’s Section 376 was earlier registered against the writer-director and he was sent to a 6-day judicial custody in September 2015.
Farooqui the husband of Bollywood director Anusha Rizvi.
The couple had worked together in Aamir Khan’s much talked about Hindi movie ‘Peepli Live.’
The court last year had said it found enough evidence on the basis of which trial can be started against Farooqui in the sexual assault case.
Farooqui was arrested on 21 June last year in Delhi after a US national filed a case of rape in the city’s New Friends Colony area.
