Law student goes back on rape charge against Chinmayanand in court

The LLM student categorically denied that she had levelled any allegation against the former Union minister as the prosecution had charged.

The woman law student who had accused former Union minister Chinmayanand of sexually exploiting her disowned statement before a special MP-MLA court in Lucknow on Tuesday.

Former Union minister Swami Chinmayanand, accused of rape by a law student, is seen outside a government hospital after a medical examination following his arrest by a special team of Uttar Pradesh police, in Shahjahanpur.(PTI)

The LLM student categorically denied that she had levelled any allegation against the former Union minister as the prosecution had charged.

Angered at this, the prosecution immediately moved an application under Section 340 of the CrPC, seeking action against her for perjury.

Judge P K Rai directed his office to register the application and asked the prosecution to furnish a copy of the application to the victim and the accused.

The court fixed October 15 for hearing on the application.

The Allahabad High Court in February this year granted bail to Chinmayanand, whose trust runs the Shahjahanpur law college where the woman studied.

He was lodged in the jail following a case filed against him by the law student and was arrested in September last year.

The case was registered under Section 376-C of the IPC, an offence pertaining to the abuse of one’s position by a person in authority to “induce or seduce” a woman under his charge to have “sexual intercourse not amounting to the offence of rape”.

Chinmayanand (72) also faced charges under Sections 342 (wrongful confinement), 354-D (stalking) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code.