A special investigation team of Uttar Pradesh Police has filed charge sheets against jailed former Union Minister Chinmayanand in a rape case against a 23-year-old law student and also a separate case of extortion in which the student and her associates are under arrest for allegedly blackmailing the BJP leader.
The police, in the two charge sheets, say that all the analyzed evidence against the powerful politician and the student prove the charges against them.
“We managed to file charge sheets in less than two months. In both investigations, we questioned 105 people, recovered 20 pieces of evidence and also a lot of digital evidences and Call Data Records. We recovered 55 paper trails and are submitting case diaries and charge sheets running into 4,700 pages,” said Mr. Naveen Arora, the head of the special investigation team (SIT).
Chinmayanand has been charged under a law that deals with rape but a sub-section has been applied in his case, which deals with “misusing authority for sexual intercourse”; it appears to be a watered-down charge which carries a punishment of five to 10 years in jail and a fine. He has also been charged with stalking, criminal intimidation, and wrongful confinement.
On Tuesday, a BJP leader and his associate were booked in connection with the extortion case against Chinmayanand, who is currently in jail. The law pupil has also been imprisoned after police charged her with extortion, illegal daunting and “disappearance of proof”.
The police identified the BJP leader as DPS Rathore, the younger brother of JPS Rathore, the vice president of the party’s Uttar Pradesh unit. Police said DPS Rathore was involved in a conspiracy to blackmail Chinmayanand and was helping the law student extort money.
Police also claimed Mr. Rathore and his partners later decided to hit a separate agreement with Chinmayanand for Rs. 1.25 crore, after convincing the law student to surrender a replica of the tapes that purportedly show her being sexually assaulted.
DPS Rathore has not yet been arrested, according to police, but his name has bee included in the charge sheet in the extortion case.
The charge sheets, presented before a court in western UP’s Shajahanpur town on Wednesday afternoon, were filed about 45 days after Chinmayanand and the law student were both arrested in the matter of a few days for their role in the respective cases.
The probe team investigating the two cases says both the charge sheets run into 20 pages each and it is now up to the court to take cognizance. If it does, then a trial will start in both cases.
