Mumbai, May 07: An appeal was today filed in the Bombay High Court challenging a sessions court order which dismissed a cheating case filed against Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai and her family for non-payment of brokerage towards purchase of property. The appeal, filed by a real estate agent, is likely to come up for hearing after the summer vacations in mid-June.
On March 29, sessions judge H S Deshpande had dismissed the case filed in a lower court against Aishwarya Rai and her family for non-payment of brokerage to the estate agent Krishnakumar Shetty.
The court had discharged the actress and her family from the charges observing that prima facie no case of cheating was made out against them and that the complaint was barred by time limitation. The matter pertained to 1998 while the complaint was filed in 2004, the judge observed.
The judge had held that the matter was civil in nature and hence the complainant should have taken recourse to filing a civil suit rather than opting for a criminal complaint of cheating.
The appeal urged that the judge had erred in dismissing the complaint as the complainant had not yet opened his case before the court. Unless he was given an opportunity to lead evidence, the case could not have been dismissed, it pleaded.
Bureau Report