Two Aam Aadmi Party leaders have been accused of raping a 24-year-old woman on the pretext of giving her a ticket for the Delhi Municipal Corporation elections as an AAP candidate, reported PTI. The two accused are Ram Pratap Goyal and Bhupendra Birla, the father of Rakhi Birla, the deputy speaker in the Delhi Assembly.
A case was registered against the two under sections of the Indian Penal Code that deal with gangrape and criminal intimidation. Deputy Commissioner of Police (outer) MN Tiwari confirmed the filing of the complaint. “We have started a probe and a team has been formed to arrest the accused,” Tiwari said.
The woman has told the police that Goyal raped her several times in hotel rooms and empty apartments, before introducing her to Birla's father Bhupender. She has accused the two of gangraping her. The AAP leaders allegedly told her that they had recorded the act, and threatened her to keep quiet about the the incident.
The ruling party dismissed the complaint as “baseless and false”, and said that it was politically motivated. “This is yet another instance of the BJP attacking AAP by using the Delhi Police. There have been several such cases where AAP MLAs have been attacked just to tarnish their image, but they have come out clean every time,” said AAP Delhi unit convenor Dilip Pandey. He said the accused did not even know the complainant.
Several AAP leader and legislators have been arrested in the past few months in connection with a number of cases, including rape, extortion, fracas, assault, etc. Many leaders of the party have been booked as well.
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