‘FSL report says Prajwal’s voice matches with male voice in footage of woman ‘raped’ by ex-MP’

The Special Investigation Team (SIT) on Thursday told the High Court of Karnataka that the report of the Forensic Sciences Laboratory (FSL) had stated that the voice samples of former MP Prajwal Revanna matched with the voice of the male recorded in a video footage in which an aged woman was allegedly being raped by him.

Opposing Mr. Prajwal’s plea for grant of anticipatory bail in the case of repeatedly raping the woman, who is in her 60s, Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) Ravivarma Kumar said that the male voice recorded in the video footage was found to be similar to Mr. Prajwal’s voice sample in the forensic analysis.

Not edited

Mr. Kumar also said that the video footage, recovered from a mobile phone, was also found to be genuine, continuous, not edited and not morphed. Even the facial features of the woman found in the video footage was found similar to the facial feature of the victim-woman, he pointed out.

The transcript of the video footage disclosed the words uttered by the victim woman expressing her protest and rejection, her shout, cry and agony as she was coerced to “cooperate” with the accused for sexual acts multiple times in Hassan and in Bengaluru city.

On the delay of more than four years in lodging a complaint against Mr. Prajwal, Mr. Kumar said that the accused had threatened her that he would send the video of sexual act to her family members. She was also constrained not to lodge a complaint keeping in mind the future of her unmarried younger daughter.

After it went viral

The SPP said that she had lodged the complaint after the video clip went viral, showing her face as her family members were by then understood her plight and were supportive of her decision to lodge complaint.

Though the SIT claimed that Mr. Prajwal himself had recorded the videos of sexual assaults, his mobile, in which he allegedly recorded such acts, could not be traced.

Justice M. Nagaprasanna, who heard the arguments on behalf of Mr. Prajwal and the SIT, reserved the order. The court had last week reserved its order in three more petitions, one seeking bail and two seeking anticipatory bail.

Published - September 26, 2024 09:05 pm IST