Seema has had to live with the stigma of being an illicit child. And she has also been accused of being an abettor in a corruption case against her so-called illegitimate father.
Citing her ‘mental agony’, the 36-year-old fashion designer moved the Bombay High Court for quashing of the charges against her. But the judges on Tuesday felt she was 16 years too late.
Seema (not her real name) has said in her petition that her mother was first married to an actor and had a son. After her husband died in 1969, she married Anchal Bahadur Singh, an officer in the Indian Army. Seema was born out of this wedlock on June 13, 1972.
In 1992, Manjit Singh Khera, a central excise officer, was accused of having assets disproportionate to his known sources of income. He allegedly built up assets worth Rs43.5 lakh between 1980 and 1992.
As soon as the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) began investigations, Seema too was implicated in the case. She was charged with abetting the crime as an illicit child of Khera and her mother, according to her petition. The ACB raided her Bandra flat on October 13, 1992.
Seema has contended that the ACB did not produce any record to show that she was an illegitimate child of her mother and Khera. On Tuesday, standing at the back row of the court room Seema was trying to hold her tears back while her advocate Subhash Jha urged the court to quash charges against her because of the inordinate delay.
Though the chargesheet against Khera was filed in 1999, there has been no progress in the case before the trial court.
A division bench of justices SB Mhase and Amjad Sayed admitted the petition for final hearing. “We are sympathetic but there is a delay of 16 years,” justice Mhase said. Jha cited a Supreme Court judgment of this year and said the court should quash the charges on grounds of inordinate delay.
