Overview
- An additional sessions judge cleared the defendant of the Section 307 IPC charge, citing insufficient evidence after the complainant did not identify him.
- In court, the survivor testified that she does not remember any 1977 incident and said she does not know the accused, which the judge noted left the prosecution without its star witness.
- The accused, identified in reports as Chandrakant or Chandrashekhar Kalekar, had jumped bail in 1977, leading to a non-bailable warrant in 1984 and a case file that lay dormant for decades.
- Mumbai Police re-arrested him on October 14, 2025, after tracing him to a Ratnagiri village using voter lists, documents and intelligence inputs, and he was granted bail within days due to advanced age.
- The case stemmed from a Colaba police complaint alleging the stabbing of Aruna Arundhekar near Nariman Point’s New Council Hall, with a sessions-court trial this fall lasting about two months.