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 North Goa and was taken to Central Jail at Colvale to begin a 10-year sentence for rape and related offences.

Outside the court he told reporters he was sure justice would come in the Supreme Court. One version of his remarks, carried by PTI, was short: the case is in the Supreme Court and justice will come. Another, carried by India Today, had him saying he would approach the court again and was confident of relief. Both versions point to the same next date.

On 25 August a Supreme Court bench of Justice Alok Aradhe dismissed Tejpal's plea for exemption from surrender. The court said his criminal appeal against the Bombay High Court conviction would be listed on 22 September if a surrender certificate reached the registry on or before 21 September. That condition is now in his hands and in the jail superintendent's paperwork.

The High Court of Bombay at Goa, in a division bench of Justices Neela Gokhale and Amit Jamsandekar, convicted Tejpal on 6 August. It set aside a 2021 trial court acquittal and sentenced him to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment. The bench convicted him under Section 376(2)(f) of the Indian Penal Code, rape by a person in a position of trust or authority, and under Sections 354A and 354B, sexual harassment and assault with intent to disrobe.

The case dates to 7 and 8 November 2013. A junior colleague accused Tejpal of sexually assaulting her in a hotel lift in Goa during a Tehelka event. He was arrested on 30 November 2013. In May 2021 a sessions court in Goa acquitted him. The trial judge wrote that the complainant had not shown the kind of behaviour a victim of sexual assault might plausibly show. The Goa government appealed. The High Court reversed that acquittal this August.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing in the Supreme Court, had asked for more time and pointed to Tejpal's age and the years already spent in custody. The court refused. The High Court had already given weeks to surrender. The Supreme Court then fixed the appeal date to the production of the certificate. That sequence left Monday as the day he had to walk into Mapusa.

The Goa government has also gone to the Supreme Court seeking a life term rather than 10 years. That petition sits alongside Tejpal's own appeal. The 22 September listing, if the certificate is filed, is the first chance for a higher court to look at the High Court judgment rather than at the surrender calendar.

Tejpal is 62. Colvale is the central prison for North Goa. The surrender does not decide the appeal. It only meets the condition the Supreme Court set for the appeal to be heard. The legal fight that began in a Goa hotel lift in 2013 now has a prisoner number and a date in mid-September for the first hearing on the conviction itself.