Senior BJP leader and three-term former MP, Swami Chinmayanand has been arrested in connection with rape charges. The arrest of the 73-year-old former junior home minister of India came days after several videos of the BJP leader receiving massage went viral. A local court later sent him to 14-day judicial custody.
His arrest has taken place after a law student alleged that she was repeatedly raped and blackmailed by Chinmayanand. The 23-year-old student from Shahjahanpur, who studied at the same law college run by the rape-accused Chinmayanand, had gone to a court amidst heavy security to record her statement on Monday.
Among other things, Chinmayanand is accused of filming the law student take bath and blackmailing her with the video to rape her repeatedly. The girl had also submitted more than three dozen video clips recorded using spy cap embedded in her spectacles.
The Uttar Pradesh Police had booked Chinmayanand, who has denied charges of rape, under Sections 364 (kidnapping or abducting in order to murder) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC on 27 August based on the father’s complaint.
The girl had gone missing after releasing a video against Chinmayanand, who’s also the president of the law college’s management committee. She was later traced in Rajasthan on 30 August. She was later produced before the top court, which directed the Uttar Pradesh government to set up a special investigation team to ‘address her grievances.’
The girl’s father had said that he was under pressure from the police to change his complaint. This had prompted many to draw a parallel to the infamous gang-rape case against BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar. The BJP was forced to expel Sengar from the party reluctantly after the Supreme Court took a dim view of the rape victim’s suspicious road accident last month.