Tarun Tejpal surrenders at Mapusa and is taken to Colvale jail

Tarun Tejpal, the former editor-in-chief of Tehelka, surrendered on Monday before the Additional Sessions Court at Mapusa in Goa and was taken to Central Jail, Colvale, to begin a ten-year sentence in a 2013 sexual assault case.

The Supreme Court on 25 August directed him to surrender within three weeks after a bench of Justice Alok Aradhe dismissed his plea for exemption. The court said his criminal appeal against conviction would be listed on 22 September if a surrender certificate reached the registry by 21 September. He appeared on the last stretch of that clock.

Outside court he said the fight would continue in the Supreme Court. I just want to say that we are in the Supreme Court, we are sure the justice will come, he told cameras, in remarks circulated by PTI. Later he said he was confident of relief once the appeal is heard.

The conviction is six weeks old. On 6 August a Bombay High Court bench of Justices Neela Gokhale and Amit Jamsandekar set aside a 2021 trial-court acquittal and convicted Tejpal under Indian Penal Code sections 376(2)(f), rape by a person in a position of trust or authority, 354A, sexual harassment, and 354B, assault or use of criminal force with intent to disrobe a woman. The sentence is ten years of rigorous imprisonment. The case concerns assaults that a junior colleague said took place in a hotel lift in Goa on 7 and 8 November 2013, during a Tehelka event.

Tejpal was first arrested on 30 November 2013. He spent years in the trial court, which acquitted him in May 2021. The Goa government appealed. The High Court accepted the prosecution case and rejected the defence reading of consent and delay. The Goa government has since gone to the Supreme Court seeking a life term rather than ten years.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing in the exemption plea, had asked the Supreme Court to let the appeal be heard before custody resumed, citing the age of the case and time already spent inside. The bench refused. The order made surrender the price of a listing. Monday's appearance was compliance with that price.

Colvale is North Goa's central prison. The surrender certificate is now the document the Supreme Court registry is waiting for. If it is filed by 21 September, 22 September becomes a real hearing date rather than a placeholder. The appeal will test the High Court's reversal of an acquittal, which is a heavier lift than a routine sentence appeal. It will also be heard under a statute that has been rewritten since 2013. The court will have to apply the law as it stood at the time of the offence.

The complainant has not been a public voice in the last month of filings. The legal file is now about custody, the certificate and the 22 September list. Tejpal is 62. He leaves the Mapusa court as a convicted prisoner, with an appeal pending and a state that wants the term lengthened. Those three facts will still be true on the morning the Supreme Court opens the papers, provided the certificate arrives on time.

Goa's 2021 acquittal spent pages on delay and on messages the trial judges treated as holes in the prosecution story. The High Court read the same papers and found a man in authority and a colleague who was not free to refuse. Two benches, one file, two endings. That split is what the Supreme Court will be asked to close on 22 September, provided the Colvale certificate is in Delhi the day before.

For a case that has run for almost 13 years, Monday was a short administrative act with a long shadow. A High Court conviction stands until the Supreme Court says otherwise. The editor who built Tehelka on sting journalism is serving the sentence that court imposed. The next court date is eight days away, and only if the jail paper reaches Delhi by the 21st.