There have been many twists in the BJP leader Swami Chinmayanand’s sexual abuse case, which has gained traction in the media recently. Various media outlets have been highlighting the abduction angle in the case after UP police filed an FIR against Swami Chinmayanand, booking him for abduction and intimidation on the basis of the victim’s father’s complaint.
The UP police, on Friday, managed to trace the alleged victim in Rajasthan and produced her in Supreme Court the same day. She told the court that she had gone to Delhi and then Rajasthan on her own will with her friend. With her statement recorded in court, the allegation of a ‘kidnapping’ angle in the case can be ruled out now.
The Uttar Pradesh LLM student, who had initially accused BJP MP and former Union Minister Chinmayanand of sexually harassing her, after being produced before the Supreme Court yesterday withing hours of being traced by police, told the judges in an in-camera interaction that she had left Shahjahanpur with her three college mates on her own will “in order to protect herself.”
On the court’s orders, the girl’s parents are will be brought to Delhi to meet her. Apart from the parents, the woman’s two younger siblings are also on their way to Delhi. “The Delhi Police team arrived in Shahjahanpur and gave us a copy of the Supreme Court order before taking us to Delhi to meet our daughter,” the father of the law student told news agency PTI on phone.
The victim had expressed her inhibitions of returning to her hometown in Uttar Pradesh until she meets her parents. The SC ordered that the woman will be in Delhi for four days until the next hearing, which is scheduled on September 2 and that her safety will be ensured.
Meanwhile, the Uttar Pradesh police have been exploring legal options to arrest Sanjay Singh, the extortionist and victim’s friend who had allegedly sent a WhatsApp message demanding a ransom of Rs 5 crore from Chinamayanand. He was with the girl in Rajasthan, and he was also produced along with the girl in Supreme Court on Friday.
Sources in the Uttar Pradesh police confirmed that the Whatsapp message demanding Rs 5 crore was sent to the BJP leader, obtaining a QR code by generating a pin on a SIM belonging to someone else. The number used to send the extortion message was 860420**** on August 22 at 12.53 PM.
Though Swami Chinmayanad’s comment on the issue could not be registered until now, his lawyer Om Singh confirmed they would continue to seek charges of criminal intimidation against the girl’s friend. He added since the girl had been traced, the abduction charges on Swami Chinmayanand do not hold any grounds.
The law student from Uttar Pradesh, who went ‘missing’ for nearly a week, after releasing a video in which she accused BJP leader Swami Chinmayanand of sexual abuse, was traced in Rajasthan on Friday.
A team of UP Police recovered the woman from a hotel near Mehandipur Balaji temple in Dausa. According to the Bareilly deputy inspector general (DGP) of police Rajesh Kumar Pandey, “After the missing law student was spotted in Delhi on August 24, police teams were sent to her hotel but she had left the place before police reached there. Thereafter, she had stopped using her phone, but we got in touch with the cab driver, whose phone they had used to contact with two persons who were providing them support We started following both the persons. On Friday morning, one of them used their debit card to withdraw money from an ATM in Dausa. Our team rushed to Dausa and recovered the CCTV footage of the ATM, in which the student was also spotted. We later recovered the girl from a hotel near Mehandipur Balaji Temple.”
At first, the UP police had said the woman had been found with a friend and was being taken home in Uttar Pradesh but then the police team had to suddenly change the route and proceed towards Delhi from Fatehpur Sikri after the apex court directed them to produce the woman in court on Friday itself.
The Court had taken suo motu cognizance of the incident after a group of lawyers had written a letter to the Court urging for the same. The matter was mentioned before the Bench headed by Justice NV Ramanaon Wednesday.
The LLM student from the Swami Shukdevanand Law College (SS Law College) in Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh had released a video on social media on August 23, levelling allegations of sexual harassment against BJP leader Swami Chinmayanand.
In the video posted on Friday, the girl alleged that Chinmayanand, the director of her college, is threatening to kill her and her family as she has evidence that could land him in trouble. She asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath for help. The student, however, went missing three days after the allegations were made. This had raised suspicion that the BJP leader had abducted her, and accordingly police had registered a case against him.
Earlier, Swami Chinmayanand had stated that he was being framed in the case as a part of a big conspiracy to malign the Uttar Pradesh government’s reputation.
The court will hear the matter again on Monday.
