A law student from Shahjahanpur who had gone missing after accusing former BJP MP Swami Chinmayanand of harassing her was found in Rajasthan, the Uttar Pradesh police said on Friday.
The woman student along with her friend were located in Rajasthan by the Shahjahanpur police. Necessary legal action was being taken, U.P. police said.
The former MP, who served as a Minister of State for Home Affairs under the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, was on Tuesday charged with kidnapping (in order to murder) the student. He was also charged with criminal intimidation. The FIR was filed on the complaint of the woman’s father after she went missing, days after alleging in a video clip that Mr. Chinmayanand, the director of Swami Shukdevanand PG College, where she studies, had been harassing her as well as other girls.
The matter came to light after the woman posted a video clip online on August 24, claiming she and her family were under threat from a “big leader of the sant samaj” and requested Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene. She did not name Mr. Chinmayanand or specify the harassment or exploitation she allegedly endured, but claimed the “sant” had “ruined the lives of many women” and now wanted to kill her.
She also claimed she had all the evidence against him.
Unable to find his daughter at her college hostel after the video surfaced, the student’s father blamed Mr. Chinmayanand. He alleged that he suspected that his daughter and the other women mentioned in the video may have been sexually exploited.
Though Mr. Chinmayanand did not clarify on the allegations, his lawyer dismissed them as a “conspiracy” and attempt to extort from the former MP. The police are probing Mr. Chinmayanand’s complaint in which he alleged that he received an extortion text message from an unknown phone number demanding ₹5crore from him.
