Bengaluru: Event manager held for trapping, blackmailing, raping models

[email protected] (Bangalore Mirror)
February 8, 2017

Bengaluru, Feb 8: A Bengaluru-based event manager has been arrested on charges of drugging, raping and blackmailing a young model. After arresting Pragdish Kapoor, the police also found several videos and photos of other models on his phone and laptop, which he had allegedly been using to blackmail and rape the women.Master

Kapoor was busted by Sakshi (name changed), a 17-year-old model from Mumbai, now based in Bengaluru. The class 11 student, who also took up modelling assignments on the side, was contacted by Kapoor recently. He claimed he hired models for fashion shows and was looking to get Sakshi for an assignment.

"We exchanged numbers as he came across as a professional contact. But soon, he started calling up regularly, insisting that we meet to discuss work. By February 5, he had become extremely persistent, claiming he was near my house and wanted to speak with me. My mother dropped me till his car. She spoke with him and he reassured her. He then took me to his place in Ramamurthy Nagar," said Sakshi.

"As soon as we entered his house, he locked the door and stopped pretending. He directly asked me to have sex with him. I was shocked and told him I wasn't well and wanted to leave. But he forcibly made me drink a glass of milk, which made me drowsy. He then raped and videographed me. When I asked him to delete it, he said he would do so if I sleep with him again," said Sakshi.

According to the young woman, he then sent her back home in a cab. She told a close friend about the incident, who took her to the commissioner's office and a case was registered.

As soon as the FIR was lodged, the Ramamurthy Nagar police started looking for Kapoor, and within the next few hours, he was arrested. But when the police officials started questioning him, they came to know that Sakshi wasn't an exception. He had been regularly trapping and raping models in the city. The evidence was all over his phone and laptop.

A senior police officer, who is part of the investigation, said they were going deeper into the case to find out how many others were similarly exploited. The case, the official said, brings to the fore the dangers women in the fashion industry face from predators. "Our investigation in this case has shown that there are several others like Sakshi who are sexually exploited and blackmailed," said the officer.

The police have registered a case of rape and have also invoked the POCSO Act against Kapoor because the model is a minor.

Comments

shaji
 - 
Wednesday, 8 Feb 2017

Cut private organ of this rapist so that he can feel the pain. Less punishment will encourage him and like minded people to carry on such things. its also unfortunate that girls are tendign towards fashion world to get popularity and money. How come her mother let her go with one unkown person alone. May be her mother also looking to earn money through her daughter. Girls are giving chance to such people to rape her. Girls are also equally responsible for this. Weak law and punishment is encouraging people for rape. There should be capital punishment.

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News Network
June 14,2020

Mangaluru, June 14: Private schools under the aegis of Association of English Medium Schools in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi urged the State government to reimburse the arrears of the fee related to admission of students under the Right to Education (RTE) Act.

Speaking to newsmen here on Sunday association president Y. Mohammed Beary said the State government has not cleared the arrears for the last two years. “The 400 private schools in two districts have to get around Rs 2 crore,” he said and added that the overall arrears that the government has to pay to schools in the State are around Rs1,200 crore.

Mr. Beary said arrears have made the school managements like his, who collect annual fees of about Rs 20,000 from a student, hard to function. Due to lockdown from March the schools could not conduct annual examinations and hence they could not collect pending fees from parents.

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News Network
January 4,2020

Madikeri, Jan 4: Two girls were seriously injured after a wild elephant attacked them on their way back to home near Injilagere here, Forest officials said on Saturday.

The officials said that Nityashree of class four, along with her younger sister Yuvashree of class two, were on their way back home from Government Primary School. The students are the daughters of Mani, resident of School estate line house in Puliyeri village.

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coastaldigest.com news network
February 14,2020

Bengaluru, Feb 14: In a major embarrassment to the police, the Karnataka High Court has termed as illegal the prohibitory orders imposed under Section 144 of CrPC by the City Police Commissioner in December 2019 in the light of the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests in Bengaluru.

The orders were passed “without application of mind” and without following due procedures, the court noted. Giving reasons for upholding the arguments of the petitioners that there was no application of mind by the Police Commissioner (Bhaskar Rao) before imposing restrictions, a division bench of the High Court said he had not recorded the reasons, except reproducing the contents of letters addressed to him by the Deputy Commissioners of Police (DCPs). 

The state government had contended that prohibitory orders were passed based on reports submitted by the DCPs who expressed apprehension about anti-social elements creating law and order problems and damaging public property by taking advantage of the anti-CAA protests.  

The High Court bench said the Police Commissioner should have conducted inquiry as stated by the Supreme Court to check the reasons cited by the DCPs who submitted identical reports. Except for this, there were no facts laid out by the Police Commissioner, the court said.

“There is complete absence of reasons. If the order indicated that the Police Commissioner was satisfied by the apprehension of DCPs, it would have been another matter,” it said.  

“The apex court has held that it must record the reasons for imposition of restrictions and there has to be a formation of opinion by the district magistrate. Only then can  the extraordinary powers conferred on the district magistrate can be exercised. This procedure was not followed. Hence, exercise of power under Section 144 by the commissioner, as district magistrate, was not at all legal”, the bench said. 

“We hold that the order dated December 18, 2019 is illegal and cannot stand judicial scrutiny in terms of the apex court’s orders in the Ramlila Maidan case and Anuradha Bhasin case,” the HC bench said while upholding the arguments of Prof Ravivarma Kumar, who appeared for some of the petitioners.   

Partly allowing a batch of public interest petitions questioning the imposition of prohibitory orders and cancelling the permission granted for protesters in the city, the bench of Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice Hemant Chandangoudar observed that, unfortunately, in the present case, there was no indication of application of mind in passing prohibitory orders.

The bench said the observation was confined to this order only and it cannot be applicable in general. If there is a similar situation (necessitating imposition of restrictions), the state is not helpless, the court said.

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