Shahjahanpur Rape Case - I Will Not Run Away, Says The Woman

While legal experts pick holes in the investigation of the rape case against Chinmayanand, things get murkier with an extortion charge.

- Puja Awasthi/Shahjahanpur

As she hurried on the red and brown tiled path, under a late-blooming golden shower tree, and past the boldly painted helpline number, Miss A could smell freedom.

A month later, however, she sees only the black of a fast-spreading despair.

On August 24, Miss A, a student of the Swami Shukdevanand Law College in Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh, accused in a social media post that “a senior leader of the sant community” had destroyed the lives of many girls—including her own—and had threatened to kill her family. She went missing after this. The next day, her father tried to lodge a complaint with the Uttar Pradesh Police, accusing former Union minister Swami Chinmayanand of sexually harassing her. But the police filed the complaint only on August 27, and booked the BJP leader under IPC Section 364 (abduction with intent to murder) and 506 (criminal intimidation).

The police found Miss A in Rajasthan three days later and she filed a videos to support her allegations. The SIT arrested Chinmayanand on September 20, and charged him with section 376C of the Indian Penal Code, which is related to sexual intercourse by a person in authority.

Chinmayanand is among the most powerful politicians in the state. In Shahjahanpur, the most visible marker of the BJP leader’s presence is an educational complex of five institutes; he heads their management committee. He is never spoken of without the honorific ‘swami’ and no one recalls his given name—Krishna Pal. Like Adityanath, he is a seer. Like him, he is also a Thakur—a caste that accounts for three lakh votes in the Shahjahanpur Lok Sabha constituency. Of the six assembly constituencies that make up the Shahjahanpur Lok Sabha constituency, five are with the BJP, and one is with the Samajwadi Party. Yet, there has not been one political voice of criticism against Chinmayanand.