The Supreme Court today taking suo moto cognizance of the matter involving an LLM student who has now been missing for the last five days after making sexual harassment allegations against BJP’s Swami Chinmayanand has agreed to hear the case tomorrow.
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A group of Supreme Court lawyers had filed a petition to the Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi, to take suo moto cognizance of media reports on the case.
The LLM student from the Swami Shukdevanand Law College (SS Law College) in Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh had released a video on social media on August 23, levelling allegations of sexual harassment against BJP leader Swami Chinmayanand.
In the video posted on Friday, the girl alleged that Chinmayanand, the director of her college, is threatening to kill her and her family as she has evidence that could land him in trouble. She asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath for help.
The student, however, went missing three days after the allegations were made. Recently, a new twist was added to this week-long matter. It was reported that the girl who had accused former BJP Union Minister Swami Chinamayanand of sexual harassment, has been traced in New Delhi, along with a boy who reportedly demanded a ransom of Rs 5 crore from Chinamayanand.
A senior Uttar Pradesh Police officer confirmed that a CCTV footage which had been retrieved from a hotel in Dwarka in Delhi establishes the presence of the victim with the boy who reportedly made an extortion call to Swami Chinmayanand.
“We have recovered an Aadhaar card, submitted as address proof, from the Delhi hotel. The couple shifted to another hotel on August 25,” said an official associated with the investigation, adding, “The boy also belongs to Shahjahanpur. Efforts are on to identify his place and family.”
The police have also traced the location and the escape route of the couple from Shahjahanpur to Delhi through their call records. Sources confirmed that after August 24, the couple switched off their phones and probably started using new numbers. The police also said that the girl spoke to her family last on August 24.
The police confirmed that the call records of the victim and the boy suggests that the two have been staying in the same premises in Delhi.
Earlier, Swami Chinmayanand had stated that he was being framed in the case as a part of a big conspiracy to malign the Uttar Pradesh government’s reputation. “This is a conspiracy against me and the girl in question is a part of it. There are four other boys who had earlier tried to blackmail me and extort money,” said the former Union Minister.