The Mumbai High Court on Saturday dismissed the allegations made by businessman Raj Kundra and his partner Ryan Thorpe, questioning their arrest and subsequent imprisonment order in a case involving the production and transmission of pornographic content on the app. A single court chaired by Judge AS Gadkari rejected their request, stating that the pretrial detention of the two by a justice of the peace and subsequent judicial detention was legal and did not require intervention. In their petition, actors Shilpa Shetty and Thorpe’s husband Kundra stated that their arrests were illegal because the mandatory requirements for issuing notices under section 41A of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) were not complied with.
In their plea of guilt, the two asked the higher court to order their immediate release, overturn the two arrest warrants passed by the magistrate after they were arrested, and place them in police custody. Kundra was arrested on July 19, and Thorpe, who was the head of IT at Kundra, was arrested on July 20. They are currently in judicial detention.