Law Student Sent To 14-Days Judicial Custody In Extortion Case

After the Shahjahanpur chief judicial magistrate rejected BJP Leader Chinmayanand's bail plea in the sexual assault filed by the 23-year-old law student who alleged that he raped her several times over a period of one year, the student has been arrested by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the case on Wednesday. She has been sent to 14-day judicial custody in the extortion case against her.

“The woman was arrested from her residence and taken to the hospital for medical examination. We will later produce her before a magistrate and seek her custody,” Inspector General of Police Naveen Arora, who heads the Special Investigation Team, told Hindustan Times.

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Reports say that the girl was on her way to the court in UP's Shahjahanpur for the hearing on her petition for pre-arrest bail when a large contingent of UP police comprising of the SIT stopped her car and forced her to sit in the police vehicle. She resisted and said that she had a court hearing to attend to. Soon there was total chaos and media arrived at the location and that's when the police freed her to attend the hearing.

Despite the fact that the court had fixed Thursday or September 26 to hear her plea, which sought protection from arrest, the SIT arrested the girl on Wednesday.

The arrest took place a day after she had moved a local court to grant her interim bail and the court had admitted it. Despite the fact that the court had fixed Thursday or September 26 to hear her plea, which sought protection from arrest, the SIT arrested the girl on Wednesday.

Last week the SIT arrested Chinmayanand in the case of rape and blackmail filed by the girl and right after that the SIT kick-started their probe into the extortion case filed by Chinmayanand against the girl. They also arrested three men in connection with the extortion case. They were identified as Sanjay Singh, Sachin Sengar and Vikram alias Durgesh. The police said all three had confessed to making the extortion calls.

SIT chief Naveen Arora connected the dots between the girl and one of the arrested persons, Sanjay Singh with whom, the girl had been in constant touch. The special team had counted 4,200 phone calls between the two this year. On September 23, the SIT took Sachin and Vikram on remand for 9.5 hours for taking them to the site for recovery of a mobile phone allegedly used in making the extortion demand, sources in the probe team said.

"The woman was arrested from her residence and taken to the hospital for medical examination. We will later produce her before a magistrate and seek her custody"

Chinmayanand barely spent two days in prison and since then he has been in the hospital citing health issues.

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The girl went missing on August 24 right after publishing a video on Facebook where she can be seen crying for help against a man belonging to the saint community who has ruined many girls' lives. It was later made clear that the Sant was in fact BJP leader and three-time MP Chinmayanand. She was found a week later in Rajasthan.

Chinmayanand has filed a cross-complaint against the girl for trying to extort money from him and has called the allegations against him fake and a conspiracy against him. The former minister isn’t new to criminal cases, as in November 2011 he was charged with rape after a girl who had lived at his Ashram for several years accused him. However, the Yogi Adityanath government in March this year had filed a plea to withdraw the case. But in May, a local court rejected it.

Picture credit- NDTV