A special court has acquitted former Union Minister and BJP leader Swami Chinmayanand alias Krishna Pal Singh, accused of prolonged sexual exploitation of a 23-year-old law student, reported LiveLaw.

Special Judge P K Rai said that the prosecution could not prove the case beyond reasonable doubt, and hence acquitted him of all charges. The court also reportedly noted that the survivor complainant had turned hostile during the pendency of the trial.

The law student was pursuing LLM in a college run by Chinmayanand’s ashram and was living in the hostel when she accused the BJP MP of rape. She had alleged that Chinmayanand sexually exploited her for a year after helping her with admission into his college. He allegedly filmed her taking a bath and blackmailed her with the video and raped her. The woman said that she was raped repeatedly for a year by him and she was also brought to his room at gunpoint and forced to give him massages.

The case against Chinmayanand was lodged at Kotwali police station in Shahjahanpur on August 27, 2019 on a complaint of the survivor’s father, who had said that her mobile phone was switched off since August 23, adding that he found through her Facebook account that she had been threatened by Chinmayanand and his accomplices of her physical harassment and rape, besides dire consequences, reported LiveLaw.

On September 20, he was arrested and remanded to judicial custody for stalking, criminal intimidation, wrongful confinement and sexual intercourse under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code.

Early in 2020, the Allahabad High Court granted him bail raising questions over the survivor’s silence over the alleged incident. Justice Rahul Chaturvedi, as reported by SabrangIndia, said, “A girl, whose virginity is at stake, not uttering a single word to her own parent or before the Court regarding the alleged incident, is an astonishing conduct which speak volumes about the ingeniousness of the prosecution story.”

The judgment also said, “It is also noticeable that there is also nothing on record that during the period of the alleged atrocities committed upon Miss “A” she made any complaint or even any whisper to her family members against the accused applicant, therefore, at this juncture, this Court draws its conclusion that it was a complete matter of quid pro quo but over a span of time the greed for extracting “more”, she along with her accomplices seems to have advanced for hatching a conspiracy against the applicant and tried to black mail him for ransom, through the obscene video clips recorded by herself.”

The order delivered in February last year also made some rather odd remarks about the survivor’s father saying, “It appears from the text of the FIR, lodged by father that there was no direct contact between the daughter and her father. The relationship between father and the daughter seems to be quite strange as they were having no direct contacts and were alien to each other and the father was taking stock of the situation of his daughter through her Facebook account.”

Advocate Om Singh had lodged an FIR on August 25, 2019 at Kotwali station against the law student and her friends, allegedly for demanding Rs. 5 crores as extortion from Chinmayanand but the court acquitted them based on lack of evidence and hostile witnesses, as per LiveLaw.

(To be updated with order)

Related:

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The post Witnesses turn hostile, rape accused BJP MP Chinmayanand acquitted appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In a shocking turn of events in the rape case against BJP leader Chinmayanand, the Allahabd High Court has granted him bail, even as it cast aspersions on the intentions and actions of the survivor. A 23-year-old law student had accused Chinmayanand of prolonged sexual exploitation while she was a student of an institute run by him.

But the shocking judgment delivered by Justice Rahul Chaturvedi makes several comments that could be construed as survivor shaming. The order reads, “A girl, whose virginity is at stake, not uttering a single word to her own parent or before the Court regarding the alleged incident, is an astonishing conduct which speak volumes about the ingeniousness of the prosecution story.”

The judgment also says, “It is also noticeable that there is also nothing on record that during the period of the alleged atrocities committed upon Miss “A” she made any complaint or even any whisper to her family members against the accused applicant, therefore, at this juncture, this Court draws its conclusion that it was a complete matter of quid pro quo but over a span of time the greed for extracting “more”, she along with her accomplices seems to have advanced for hatching a conspiracy against the applicant and tried to black mail him for ransom, through the obscenic video clips recorded by herself.”

Not only does this play into the cultural obsession with virginity, but also presumes that the survivor was in a state of mind to share the story of her abuse with parents in a conservative country where any conversations about sex, let alone sexual assault are either discouraged or carried out in hushed tones, thereby adding elements of shame to the narrative. It also completely disregards how the girl was allegedly constantly under surveillance and was taken to Chinmayananda by his hired muscle men. She could only get her story out when she managed to get away from her alleged abuser.

Comments on survivor’s relationship with her father

The order also makes some rather odd remarks about the survivor’s father saying, “It appears from the text of the FIR, lodged by father that there was no direct contact between the daughter and her father. The relationship between father and the daughter seems to be quite strange as they were having no direct contacts and were alien to each other and the father was taking stock of the situation of his daughter through her facebook account.”

It goes on to say, “The gist and substance of CC No. 442 of 2019, lodged on 25.08.2019 derives that it was got registered as a contrivance only to malign the stature and status to the extent of assassination of the applicant’s character. Fortifying the aforesaid narratives of the allegations, it is contended that soon thereafter sensing some rat in the dirty ragged story, father of Miss “A”- ****** lodged CC No. 445 of 2019 on 27.08.2019 in a foxy manner and design, two days after the aforesaid FIR, enrolling applicant as accused and slapping all sort of malicious allegations upon him to reduce his high reputation into ashes. To build up mountain of his argument, learned counsel for the applicant submitted that the complainant of the aforesaid FIR, even has diced his daughter Miss “A” to win the dirty game for the sake of monetary and material gains.”

This not only shames the survivor, but also casts aspertions on her father’s intentions. This once again plays into the narrative popularised by misogynists that rape cases are just a means for women to extort money from men. 

Brief background of the case

On September 20, self-proclaimed holy man, former Union Minister and BJP MP Chinmayanand, was arrested and remanded to judicial custody following allegations of sexual exploitation by a female student of an educational institution run by him.

The accusations were made by a law student from Chinmayanand’s SS Law College in a video she posted on social media on August 23. He was arrested on charges of stalking, criminal intimidation, wrongful confinement and sexual intercourse by a person in authority (Section 376C).  

But the accused made counter allegations of blackmail against the survivor and merely a day after a local court agreed to hear her plea for protection from arrest, the survivor was arrested.

The entire bail order may be read here:

Related:

Who is Chinmayanada?
Law student sent to judicial custody after accusing Chinmayananda of Sexual Exploitation
Oppn slams BJP for selective targeting of Rape Survivor in Chinmayanand Case

The post Chinmayanand granted bail, did judge shame survivor? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The case against Chinmayanand, a three-time MP of the BJP and a former union minister and “guru” to many leading the present UP regime is the most recent example. The details of the case are well known and need not be repeated here. It was believed that after the Supreme Court intervention on the letter petition filed by public-spirited lawyer Shobha Gupta and the setting up of a special investigation team to be monitored by a designated bench of the Allahabad High Court, the young woman from Shahjahanpur would get justice.

But this has not happened. The 22-year-old, who says she is a survivor of rape, is herself in jail. She is accused of extortion under IPC sections 385/ 507/ 201. All of these sections are bailable. Even as her case for bail was listed, the SIT team arrived at her home early on Wednesday morning and dragged her to a waiting jeep, traumatized and terrified. When her case came up for hearing, she was denied bail. It was found that the SIT had deliberately added another section. 67A under the IT Act which is non-bailable.

Yesterday, I travelled with my colleague Subhashini Ali and a team of activists from the All India Democratic Women’s Association to Shahjahanpur where we met her parents, lawyers and the SIT officers. I met the student in jail along with her mother and brother.

What we found was the blatant misuse of power to protect the accused in a rape case. Regretfully, the most well-intentioned orders of the Supreme Court have been used as an excuse to limit the scope of the investigation. It has been a step-by-step process. But the most important fact to emerge is that there has been no FIR filed on the complaint of rape which was registered by the Delhi police on September 7. She was traced and brought to Delhi on the orders of the Supreme Court. In Delhi, she gave a detailed complaint of the horror she underwent from the first time she was raped, reportedly by the accused Chinmayanand, in October 2018 till August of this year. She gave the names of those who had conspired with him to enable the sexual assaults. Her complaint was forwarded by the Delhi police to the SIT which confirms having received the complaint on September 8. However, till today, no FIR has been filed by the SIT on her complaint. In fact, this complaint does not figure at all in the investigations being conducted by the SIT.

When we met the officers of the SIT in their office yesterday, we inquired why an FIR was not filed on the student’s complaint. Surely this should have been the basis of their investigation, we asked. Their reply was “We have no locus standi to file any fresh FIRs. The Supreme Court in its orders has specifically asked us to investigate FIR 442 and FIR 445. So our investigations are only on these FIRs.”

These two FIRs are on entirely different issues and have nothing to do with the charge of rape. One of the FIRs (445) was filed by the father when he found his daughter missing soon after she posted a video alleging that she was being threatened and her life, and those of other young women like her, were being ruined by a “swamy”. At that time, the distraught father, linking “swamy” to Chinmayanand since his daughter was studying in an institution owned by him, filed a complaint that he suspected she had been kidnapped by Chinmayanand. The second FIR 442, was filed by Chinmayanand’s lawyer, alleging that Chinmayanand had received extortion threats on his mobile phone demanding a payment of five crores.

When the Supreme Court was to give its order on September 5, the government’s lawyer informed the court that there were two FIRs registered, 442 and 445. He did not mention that the woman’s complaint had not yet been registered. The Supreme Court ordered that the SIT should investigate both FIRs. Nowhere did the court say that her complaint should not be registered as an FIR or that no fresh FIRs germane to the case should not be registered, but that is the extraordinary interpretation made by the SIT of the court order. In its status report filed before the special bench of the Allahabad High Court, which is supposed to monitor the case, the SIT makes absolutely no mention of the girl’s complaint of rape. On its part, the High Court accepted the status report at face value. In the light of such a blatant omission, the concept of “monitoring” by a bench of the High Court especially set up for the purpose, surely needs clarification.
When we further asked the SIT officers whether, in the light of their interpretation of the limited scope of the Supreme Court order, they had passed on the woman’s complaint to the local police and administration to register an FIR, they said it was not “their mandate.” In other words, neither are they acting on her complaint nor have they asked anyone else to do so. Thus the main issue of the rape of a young woman has been eliminated by the SIT. In legal papers, her voice is silenced, she does not exist except as an extortionist. In the meanwhile in every press conference being held the SIT focuses entirely on the issue of extortion, damning the girl. So, while sabotaging the legal aspect, at the same time public perception is sought to be influenced against the girl.

What of the man she has accused? Chinmayanand was arrested on September 20 on the charge of 376c This concerns the abuse of a position of authority to “induce a person to have sexual intercourse” not amounting to rape. The SIT came to this conclusion in the course of their investigation into the charge of extortion. In the words of a senior officer of the SIT, “In one case, the girl is the victim and in the other, the accused. We have taken into account both cases.”

Many decades ago, when we were fighting for justice in the Mathura rape case, the guilty police personnel claimed that the girl had no marks of injuries on her body which proved that it was not rape but consensual intercourse. At that time, the Supreme Court had upheld this perverted reasoning which takes violent sexual assault out of the context in which the victim finds herself. It took several years of hard struggle to get the law changed. Today, in 2019, the Chinmayanand case shows that de-contextualisation of rape and sexual assault and a total ignorance or insensitivity of the condition of a rape victim and her subsequent actions remains deeply ingrained in the minds of those expected to bring justice to the victim.

Even if we accept the case of extortion against the girl, can rape be equated with the accusation of extortion as done in the approach of the SIT? What was the context in which a young woman denied justice acts in a particular way? If she is guilty of extortion, does it mean that she was not a victim of violent rape? We asked these questions of the SIT members. They did not have much to say on this aspect. They did reiterate that they had consulted the legal department before filing the cases.

A grave injustice is being committed right before our eyes. Eight years ago, Chinmayanand was accused of rape by an inmate of one of his ashrams and a case of rape was filed against him in November 2011. The complaint was that he had held her captive and she had been assaulted for several years. When the Adityanath government came to power, it made a request before the CJM of Shahjahanpur to withdraw the case of rape against Chinmayanand. The CJM refused and issued a warrant against him. The case went to the High Court which granted a stay on Chinmayanand’s arrest.

In the current case, the woman was just 21 when she was first assaulted. She did what she did to save herself. She showed courage in taking him on, knowing that the system was in his support. Today, she is being taught that you cannot challenge a rapist when he is a VIP. Everything is being done to break her spirit. What is the message being sent to other victims of rape and sexual abuse and assault? Stay silent, otherwise you will end up in jail. She wept on the shoulder of her younger brother when we were permitted to meet her in jail. She showed him bruises on her arms when she had been grabbed by the policewomen who had come to arrest her. She said she felt humiliated. What about me, she said, what about what I have suffered. He consoled her with the news that there are many people who support her struggle for justice. She brightened up and reiterated her resolve to get justice.

Brinda Karat is a Politburo member of the CPI(M) and a former Member of the RajyaSabha
 
 

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