Prayagraj (Uttar Pradesh): Justice Rajiv Gupta of the Allahabad High Court on Thursday recused himself from hearing a Criminal Case quashing petition filed by former Union Minister and BJP leader Swami Chinmayanand in connection with an alleged rape case registered against him. Justice Gupta has referred the matter to the Chief Justice for shifting the case to another bench. The next hearing in the case will take place on May 5.
Essentially Swami Chinmayanand Saraswati has moved to the Allahabad High Court with his 482 Cr.P.C. application to quash the charge sheet as well as the entire proceedings of a case instituted against him in the year 2011 under Sections 376, 506 I.P.C, pending in the court of C.J.M., Shahjahanpur.
He has also challenged an order of the Magistrate (passed on May 24, 2018) rejecting the application filed by the State to withdraw the prosecution against Swami Chinmayanand Saraswati under Section 321 CrPC [Withdrawal from prosecution]. The court has already stayed coercive action against the petitioner. The case was supposed to come up for hearing before the single bench of Gupta.
The case against Chinmayanand was lodged at Kotwali police station in Shahjahanpur on August 27, 2019 based on a complaint filed by the victim student's father. The victim's father had stated that her daughter was pursuing LLM in a college run by Chinmayanand's ashram and was living in a hostel there. The complainant also mentioned that her mobile phone was found switched off since August 23. He also found through her social media account that she had been threatened by Chinmayanand and his accomplices of her physical harassment and rape, besides dire consequences. He said when he tried to contact Chinmayanad, he had switched off his mobile. Chinmayanad was arrested in the case on September 20, 2019, and sent to jail.
Read: Chinmayananda case: SC Justice Banumathi recuses herself from hearing pleas
Later, the investigation was completed in the case and a charge sheet against him was filed on November 4, 2019 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 rape" besides other sections.
