A woman who had accused Bahujan Samaj Party MP Atul Rai of raping her in 2018 died at a hospital in Delhi on Tuesday, more than a week after she set herself on fire outside the Supreme Court with a friend, PTI reported.
The 24-year complainant and her friend had been admitted to the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in Delhi. “The woman succumbed to her injuries during the course of treatment on Tuesday,” Deepak Yadav, deputy commissioner of police (New Delhi), told the news agency.
The woman’s friend had died on Saturday, according to The Indian Express. “We performed surgeries on them the day they were brought to us, but they had severe burn injuries and treatment was difficult,” an unidentified official at the hospital had told the newspaper. “They suffered organ failure.”
The police had filed a first information report against Rai in May 2019, according to the newspaper. In June, Rai was sent to judicial custody. The case is still pending in a court in Uttar Pradesh’s Prayagraj district.
The woman had repeatedly alleged that Rai’s associates harassed her and her family. Before setting herself on fire in Delhi on August 16, the woman, in a Facebook live, had also accused the Uttar Pradesh police of helping Rai.
“They have issued a non-bailable warrant against me,” she had said. “The judge has summoned me. They are all a part of nexus...Me and my witness were trapped.”
The non-bailable warrant issued against the woman in August was based on a complaint filed by Rai’s brother Pawan Kumar in 2020. He had accused the woman of forging documents to hide her date of birth while filing the rape complaint.
The police had charged the woman under Sections 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc), 468 (purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.
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