The 23-year-old law student who had accused former Union minister Chinmayanand of sexual harassment on Tuesday disowned her own statement before a special court trying MPs and MLAs in Lucknow, PTI reported.
The woman denied that she had made any allegations against Chinmayanand, as the prosecution had charged. The prosecution lawyers then moved an application under the Criminal Procedure Code, seeking action against her for perjury.
On Tuesday, judge PK Rai ordered his office to register the application and asked the prosecution to furnish a copy of it to the woman and Chinmayanand. The court said it would hear the case on October 15 again.
In August last year, the woman had gone missing soon after posting a video detailing her alleged ordeal at the hands of Chinmayanand. Although she did not mention anyone, her father named Chinmayanand in a missing persons complaint. The police then booked Chinmayanand on kidnapping charges, and watered down sexual assault charges, but not rape.
The woman was found in Rajasthan later that month, and was produced in the Supreme Court. The law student claimed that she possessed about 35 videos that would implicate the former BJP leader.
On October 8, the Supreme Court had refused to allow Chinmayanand to access a copy of the woman’s earlier statement implicating him. A top court bench of Justices UU Lalit, Vineet Saran and S Ravindra Bhat set aside the Allahabad High Court’s order to let Chinmayanand have the statement that the woman gave before the magistrate.
The Supreme Court had in November last year imposed a stay on the High Court’s order. The complainant had argued that giving Chinmayanand access to her statement before filing the chargesheet was against the law and would have a far-reaching effect in the case.
On February 5 this year, Chimayanand was released from Shahjahanpur prison in Uttar Pradesh, two days after the Allahabad High Court granted him bail.
In his bail order, Allahabad High Court Justice Rahul Chaturvedi said the case was a “complete matter of quid pro quo”, and claimed the woman’s conduct was “astonishing” and she had “tried to blackmail him for ransom”. He added that a “girl, whose virginity is at stake, not uttering a single word to her own parent or before the court” highlighted the “ingeniousness of the prosecution’s story”.
The complainant and three of her friends had received bail from the High Court in December in an extortion case filed on the basis of Chinmayanand’s complaint. She allegedly blackmailed the former BJP leader for Rs 5 crore.
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