UP Law Student In Jail But Rape Accused Chinmayanand Continues To Be In Hospital. So Much For Justice?
Former Union ministers own bail petition in the sexual assault case is coming up for hearing that day. The 72-year-old politician spent his fourth day in a Lucknow hospital where doctors are monitoring him for diabetes and urinary problems. A local court will on Monday hear the bail of the law student arrested for trying to extort Rs 5 crore from Chinmayanand the BJP leader she has accused of rape.
The alleged rape case involving former BJP minister Chinmayanand is getting murkier day by day. The UP law student who had filed a rape complaint against Chinmayanand is currently in jail. A local court will on Monday hear the bail of the law student arrested for trying to extort Rs 5 crore from Chinmayanand, the BJP leader she has accused of rape.
The former Union minister's own bail petition in the sexual assault case is coming up for hearing that day.
The 72-year-old politician spent his fourth day in a Lucknow hospital, where doctors are monitoring him for diabetes and urinary problems after having cleared him of any cardiac illness.
The student's lawyer filed the bail plea before a sessions court on Thursday, a day after a lower court rejected a similar application. District Judge Ram Babu Sharma fixed September 30 as its date of hearing.
The woman's anticipatory bail plea was scheduled to be head on Thursday, but it has become infructuous after her arrest.
A local court had sent the woman, who studied at a college run by Chinmayanand's ashram, to 14-day judicial custody.
According to the special investigation team (SIT), the student and three men ¨C- arrested last week -- had threatened to upload video clips showing Chinmayanand getting massages from her.
In Lucknow, a medical bulletin issued by the state-run Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences said the politician remains under observation.
Chinmayanand was admitted there on Monday, when a test cleared him of any cardiac problems.
He had been sent to 14-day judicial custody by a Shahjahanpur court on Friday, following his arrest by the same SIT, formed by the Uttar Pradesh police on the directions of the Supreme Court.
"Swami Chinmayanand was admitted in Cardiology Department of SGPGI with symptoms of low blood pressure and left-sided chest pain," a hospital bulletin said.
An angiography conducted on him on Monday showed there were no ¡°significant¡± artery blockages, just calcification. But the hospital said he is still complaining of severe weakness and urinary problems.
"He is under observation and undergoing further investigations for his diabetic and urinary problems," it said.
Chinmayanand was arrested under section 376C of the Indian Penal Code, a lesser charge than rape.
It is usually applied in cases where a person abuses his position to "induce or seduce" a woman under his charge to have "sexual intercourse not amounting to the offence of rape".
Meanwhile, Chinmayanand's lawyer Om Singh claimed the woman is heard boasting in another video clip that she can access the sim card of anybody's phone ¨C including that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
(With agency inputs)
