Former beauty queen Anara Gupta, facing charges of appearing in a porn video, gained a reprieve when Jammu and Kashmir police on Mar 18 told a court here that a forensic report confirming she had acted in the blue film was “irrelevant”. Judge Gupta was hearing a petition filed by Shiv Sena leader Amit Chauhan, who had sought a probe into the scandal on the basis of the Feb 5 report from the Chandigarh laboratory. The Crime Branch had filed objections in response to Chauhan’s petition. Narain Gupta said there was nothing in the case against Anara and the state high court was seized of the matter.
The high court has already reserved its judgement in the case. Anara’s travails started in October last year, when police picked her up from her house and kept her in illegal detention for nine days before a formal case was registered against her for allegedly appearing in a porn film. Five police officials have been suspended for keeping Anara in illegal custody.
Moves are afoot for further action against them for giving the media access to her and for extracting a confessional statement from her. Anara later retracted that statement and charged the police with torture and humiliating her and her family. The porn film was referred to the Chandigarh laboratory in connection with a case registered against a video library owner in the industrial town of Bari Brahmna, 15 km south of Jammu, in December last year.
FSL officials said the two CD’s provided to them by the J&K; police are not very good in quality and so it is difficult for them to give an opinion based on just those.
The case was quite complex as the Hyderabad and Chandigarh forensic laboratories had given conflicting opinions and now it is up to the Gandhinagar FSL to come to a conclusion.
In February, the J&K; police had sent two pornographic CDs allegedly featuring Anara to determine if the girl shown in the CD was actually Anara or not. At the preliminary stage of investigation, the Hyderabad FSL officials had given Anara a clean chit.
In their report, they stated that using ‘biometric studies from head to toe’, it had determined that the featured girl was not Anara. However, the Chandigarh FSL officials in their report stated that they had examined the CD frame by frame and found that in terms of characteristic features of lip, eyes and nose, the woman featured in the CD resembled Anara.
Intending to submit the final report by April, the FSL officials said, “We have checked both the FSL reports and will give a final decision only after the new CD is matched with the other two CDs in our custody.”
Sources informed that Anara Gupta who was crowned Miss Jammu in 2001 has written to Chief Minister Narendra Modi requesting him to ensure that the FSL report is not influenced and remains free from bias. In October last year, the Jammu & Kashmir police arrested her for allegedly appearing in a pornographic video. She pleaded innocence and alleged that she was being framed.
