The Supreme Court on Wednesday granted protection from arrest to businessman Raj Kundra in connection with an FIR registered against him for allegedly distributing pornographic videos.
In July this year, Kundra, who is married to actor Shilpa Shetty, was arrested by Mumbai Police in another case where he was accused of distributing porn films through an app. He was granted bail in September.
A bench of justices Vineet Saran and Aniruddha Bose on Wednesday issued notice to the Maharashtra government on an appeal filed by Kundra against a Bombay High Court order rejecting his anticipatory bail.
The apex court sought the state government's reply within four weeks in connection with the FIR filed by the cyber cell of the Mumbai police.
Issue notice, returnable in four weeks. In the meanwhile, no coercive action shall be taken against the petitioner, the bench said.
Kundra had been booked under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code, Indecent Representation of Women (Prevention) Act and Information Technology Act for allegedly distributing/ transmitting sexually explicit videos.
Fearing arrest, Kundra first sought anticipatory bail from the sessions court, but it was refused, so he moved the HC, claiming that he had been framed.
The high court also rejected his anticipatory bail application on November 25.
The FIR named actors Sherlyn Chopra and Poonam Pandey as co-accused.
He was in no way connected to content creation, publication or transmission of alleged illegal videos even as the actors, who were named as co-accused, had given full consent to shoot the videos, his lawyers had claimed.