A court here on Saturday held Mahmood Farooqui, co-director of Bollywood film Peepli Live, guilty of raping an American research scholar at his residence in the city in March 2015.
Farooqui, who had been out on bail, was taken into custody after Additional Sessions Judge Sanjiv Jain delivered the verdict at the Saket district courts. Farooqui’s wife and friends were with him when the judgment was pronounced.
Arguments on the quantum of sentence will take place on August 2.
While framing the charges in September last year, the Judge had said there was prima facie sufficient material on record to try him for sexually assaulting the research scholar from Columbia University.
The incident occurred at Farooqui’s Sukhdev Vihar residence when the victim had gone to meet him to seek his help for her research on Baba Gorakhnath. The police had charge-sheeted him under Sections 376 (rape) and 201 (destruction of evidence). The latter section was dropped when the court framed charges. The victim had alleged that the accused was drunk when he sexually assaulted her.
