Bombay HC grants interim bail to wrestling teacher accused of sexually assaulting minor students

Mumbai: Bombay High Court recently granted interim bail to a wrestling teacher who was booked for allegedly touching minor students inappropriately while giving them lessons during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Granting interim protection from arrest, vacation judge Justice Milind Sathaye during the hearing of an anticipatory bail plea filed by the 22-year-old teacher against whom the FIR was lodged by a Pune police station on September 21 for sexual assault and sexual harassment under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act for the alleged acts committed between June 2020 and September 2022.

The complainant, a senior teacher, said a colleague was informed by a ninth-grade student that during a recent trip he overheard six classmates saying that the accused teacher did something wrong to them. The colleague then asked those students to write it all down.

They revealed that, under the pretext of teaching wrestling, the accused teacher asked them to touch each other inappropriately and did the same to them.

The teacher's earlier bail plea was rejected by the Pune session court, following which he moved to the Bombay High Court. (UNI)