No custody, no listing: Tarun Tejpal must surrender in two weeks before the 22 September appeal clock can run.

Justice Alok Aradhe of the Supreme Court on Tuesday, 25 August 2026, rejected Tarun Tejpal’s application for exemption from surrender and directed surrender within two weeks. The conviction appeal may be listed on 22 September 2026 if a surrender certificate is filed on or before that date. Exemption refused is the Tuesday line. Two weeks is the surrender clock. Twenty-two September is a listing that depends on the certificate. This desk will not print the appeal as already heard, and it will not print 22 September as an automatic date if the certificate is missing.

The Bombay High Court Goa bench on 6 August 2026 overturned a 2021 acquittal and sentenced Tejpal to 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment in the 2013 rape case. That High Court judgment is the conviction under appeal. The Supreme Court has not decided the merits of the conviction appeal. A surrender direction is a custody-first listing condition. It is not a Supreme Court affirmation of the 10-year sentence, and it is not a restoration of the 2021 acquittal.

Two weeks from Tuesday is the surrender window as the tip locks it. This page will not invent a calendar last date the order as recorded here does not print in day-month form. The certificate is due on or before 22 September if that listing is to be taken up. Those are two clocks: surrender within two weeks, certificate before the September date. This desk will not collapse them into one invented deadline.

New Delhi holds the Supreme Court. Goa holds the High Court conviction. The 2013 case is the predicate. Form B and any poll date are not notified. This desk will not invent a victim name the tip does not write, a bail finding, or a merits paragraph the bench has not reached.

A conviction appeal without custody is what the Tuesday order refused to list. Exemption from surrender was the application. Refusal is the operative step. Ten years’ rigorous imprisonment remains the High Court sentence under challenge. Twenty-twenty-one remains the acquittal that the Goa bench overturned on 6 August. None of those earlier clocks is a Supreme Court merits finding.

Until surrender is certified and the appeal is actually heard, the public ledger is a Tuesday refusal of exemption from surrender, a two-week surrender direction, a possible 22 September 2026 listing if the surrender certificate is on the file by then, a Bombay High Court Goa bench judgment of 6 August 2026 that overturned a 2021 acquittal and imposed 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment in the 2013 rape case, and a Supreme Court that has not decided the merits. Custody is the Tuesday condition. Guilt at the Supreme Court is not written.