August 2026 saw two verdicts delivered by Indian courts – verdicts that should have been a straightforward test of principle for anyone who claims to stand with sexual assault survivors. Tarun Tejpal was convicted of rape and sentenced to 10 years. Three days earlier, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh was acquitted of sexual harassment charges brought by six women wrestlers, with the court finding the prosecution hadn’t proved its case beyond reasonable doubt.
Two courts. Two outcomes. One ecosystem that has already decided, independent of either verdict, who the villain is.
When Acquittal Isn’t Good Enough
Brij Bhushan walked out of Rouse Avenue Court a free man. The judge said the prosecution failed to prove the charges. That is what an acquittal means in law – nothing more, nothing less.
Congress didn’t accept it for a second. Kharge, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, and Rahul Gandhi had already spent years building the case in the court of public opinion, with Gandhi declaring that “such treatment of the country’s athletes is truly shameful” and calling “Beti Bachao” a “sham.”
देश के खिलाड़ियों के साथ ऐसा बर्ताव बहुत ही शर्मनाक है।
‘बेटी बचाओ’ बस ढोंग है! असल में भाजपा भारत की बेटियों पर अत्याचार करने से कभी पीछे नहीं हटी है। pic.twitter.com/TRgPyM8UbF
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) May 4, 2023
When the court disagreed with that framing, the ecosystem simply didn’t update. Brij Bhushan remains, in Congress’s public language, a man who got away with it – an acquittal be damned.
When Conviction Isn’t Bad Enough
Now flip to Tejpal. A trial court acquitted him in 2021. A section of Congress-aligned commentary didn’t just accept that outcome – it celebrated it.
When the case came to the limelight, a Newslaundry column went so far as to brand the survivor a “bubblegum feminist” complaining over a “small occurrence.”
In 2021, Congress MP Manish Tewari called Tejpal “much-maligned, hugely politically persecuted and now honourably exonerated,” triggering a public spat with Shiv Sena’s Priyanka Chaturvedi over exactly that framing.
Now the High Court has convicted him. Overturned the acquittal. Sentenced him to a decade for rape, ruling he abused his position of power. And the same ecosystem that couldn’t accept an honest acquittal for Brij Bhushan has gone quiet on Tejpal’s conviction, sticking instead to the “political vendetta” story it built a decade ago.
Who Shows Up In Court Matters Too
It isn’t only the commentary. Kapil Sibal and Salman Khurshid – both senior Congress figures, both top-tier lawyers, appeared for Tejpal’s defence at the Supreme Court, arguing his privacy and reputation deserved protection through in-camera hearings.
Compare that to how the same ecosystem describes any due process extended to Brij Bhushan – bail, standard trial procedure as evidence of state collusion with the accused.
One accused gets Congress’s best lawyers in court and its most sympathetic language outside it. The other gets neither, regardless of what either court actually decides.
“Believe All Women” Has Fine Print
The wrestlers who accused Brij Bhushan were, correctly, treated as credible complainants deserving public support. The junior colleague who accused Tejpal was, by contrast, subjected to public interrogation about her conduct, her messages, her decision to return to the lift a second time – much of it coming from voices within the same broad political and media ecosystem now unwilling to extend Brij Bhushan the presumption it withheld from Tejpal’s accuser.
“Believe all women” turns out to have an asterisk: believe the women whose accused happens to be politically useful to target.
The Pattern Isn’t New
This isn’t the first time this ecosystem has run two tracks simultaneously. Sadhvi Pragya received a clean chit in the Malegaon case, yet remains “terrorist” in Congress’s vocabulary to this day. Meanwhile, actual jihadi terror cases are met with the standard line that terror has no religion. The common thread isn’t evidence. It’s which conclusion serves the narrative.
Tejpal’s conviction was thirteen years coming, and it is a legitimate, serious moment of accountability. But accountability that only flows one direction – celebrated when it lands on a BJP-linked figure, denied when it lands on your own, isn’t accountability. It’s a script, and Congress’s ecosystem has been reading from the same one since decades.
Tarun Tejpal vs Brijbhushan Singh
Two verdicts.
Two courts.
Two completely different political reactions.Tejpal was convicted.
Brijbhushan was honourably acquitted.Yet the same Congress political ecosystem that once defended Tarun Tejpal as “politically persecuted”…
— Shehzad Jai Hind (@Shehzad_Ind) August 6, 2026
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