Top IAS officer in Bihar, ex-RJD MLA booked for raping HC lawyer

Patna’s SSP Manavjit Singh Dhillon said the FIR has been registered for rape and other sections of Indian Penal Code (IPC), besides sections of the Information Technology Act.

A senior IAS officer in Bihar and a former legislator of the ruling Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) were Tuesday booked for rape on a complaint by a lawyer of the Allahabad High Court, who has also claimed that the bureaucrat is the biological father of the child she gave birth to in 2018, police said.

According to police, the woman first complained to police in 2021, alleging that the former RJD MLA Gulab Yadav lured her with promise to make her a member of the Bihar Women’s Commission and called her to his residence in Rukanpura in Patna in 2016. The MLA allegedly raped her there and made a video. (Picture for representation)

The FIR (first information report), filed with Rupaspur police station in Patna two days after the order of a court at Danapur in the state capital, named IAS (Indian Administrative Service) officer Sanjeev Hans, who is currently posted as principal secretary in state energy department, Gulab Yadav, former RJD MLA from Jhanjharpur in Madhubani district, and Lalit Kumar, the caretaker of the MLA’s house in Patna.

Yadav, who was MLA between 2015 and 2020, was expelled from the party on March 3, 2022. The reasons for his expulsion couldn’t immediately be ascertained.

Patna’s senior superintendent of police (SSP) Manavjit Singh Dhillon said the FIR has been registered for rape and other sections of Indian Penal Code (IPC), besides sections of the Information Technology Act.

According to police, the woman, a resident of Aurangabad district, first complained to police in 2021, alleging that Yadav lured her with promise to make her a member of the Bihar Women’s Commission and called her to his residence in Rukanpura in Patna in 2016. The MLA allegedly raped her there and made a video.

According to the FIR, Yadav later called her to a hotel in Delhi, where IAS officer Sanjeev Hans was also present, and threatened to make the video viral. Both raped her there. Subsequently, the two raped her at various hotels in Delhi and Pune, the woman has alleged in the FIR.

After the police failed to act on her first complaint, the woman moved the Danapur court, but her petition was dismissed on May 12 last year. She then approached the Patna High Court on October 17, 2022, urging the court to order the state police chief to conduct a DNA test of on her son who was born on December 25, 2018, and claiming that Hans was the biological father. The MLA had told her the child could not be his since he had already undergone vasectomy, she informed the court in support of her claim.

On December 12, 2022, the HC referred that matter to the Danapur court for cognisance.  

After a preliminary police probe, the Danapur court ordered on Saturday last that an FIR be registered against the accused in the case.

The IAS officer and former MLA did not respond to calls.