Shahjahanpur Court Dismisses Bail Pleas Of Both Chinmayanand & Law Student Who Alleged Him Of Rape

While Chinmayanand was arrested by the SIT on September 20 in connection to rape allegations after the complainant gave a pen drive to the SIT to support her allegations, the complainant law student has been facing charges of extortion.

The SIT had earlier arrested three of the student's friends on a complaint made by Chinmayanand that they had demanded Rs. 5 crore from him and threatened him with the release of objectionable videos. The student herself was arrested by SIT on September 26 and was remanded to 14 days judicial custody after the SIT discovered her call detail records, which indicated that she and her friends had exchanged over 4,300 calls this year, most of those being exchanged in August, proximate to the time when the alleged extortion call was made.

Chinmayanand on the other hand has been in the spotlight ever since the complainant leveled allegations of sexual harassment against him by posting a live video on Facebook, post which she went missing from her home in Shahjahanpur. Later she was found in Jaipur and claimed to have escaped there in order to save her life. Thereafter, an SIT, headed by Naveen Arora, Inspector General of Grievances, was constituted by the Supreme Court to investigate into the rape allegations.

Post arrest on September 20, Chinmayanand was remanded to 14 days judicial custody. Thereafter, he filed a bail application in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate at Shahjahanpur, which came to be rejected with directions to approach the Sessions court.

The law student was arrested a day after the Sessions Court at Shahjahanpur admitted her interim bail application and listed it for hearing on September 26.

In view thereof, both Chinmayanand and the law student had approached the Sessions Court at Shahjahanpur which listed the matter today before District and Sessions Judge, Sri Ram Babu Sharma.

The SIT which arrested both of them was constituted by a bench of Justices R. Banumathi and A. S. Bopanna who had taken suo moto cognizance of the matter when the girl went missing from her college hostel. Soon after she was traced in Jaipur, the bench directed to transfer the complainant to another college for pursuing her degree and refused to meet her again. The matter was disposed of with a clarification that the proceedings were only to ensure her safety and that her education was not hampered, and she could make further submissions before the SIT.

An official copy of the order is awaited.