Chinmayanand case: Law student, facing perjury charges, fails to appear in court

A law student facing perjury charges for retracting her allegations of sexual exploitation by former Union minister Chinmayanand on Thursday failed to appear before a special Lucknow court trying cases involving lawmakers. Appearing before Special MP-MLA court on Tuesday, the LLM student had turned hostile, categorically denying that she had levelled any allegation against Chinmayanand, prompting police to move the court to try the woman on charges of perjury under section 340 of the CrPC. Taking cognisance of the prosecution’s plea, Special Judge P K Rai had fixed 15 October for hearing the application. The LLM student, however, did not appear before the court on Thursday. So did Chinmayanand, facing the charge of sexually exploiting the woman, with his counsel seeking his exemption from personal appearance for a day. Special Judge Rai exempted both Chinmyanand and the LLM student from personal appearance for a day and slated the case for next hearing on 11 November. The LLM student had on Tuesday disowned her statements given to both the police and the judicial magistrate under section 164 of the CrPC against 72-year-old Chinmayanand. The police, meanwhile on Thursday, also produced two prosecution witnesses against the 23-year-old woman, also facing the charges of blackmailing and trying to extort money from the former minister in alleged collusion with her three male friends. The extortion case against the woman and her male colleagues had been lodged on a complaint by Chinmayanand who had alleged that they had demanded Rs 5 crore from him while threatening to make public video clips that purportedly showed him getting massages from the student. The court recorded the statements of the two prosecution witnesses in the case and slated its next hearing with other cases to November 11. The police had filed the charge sheet in the extortion case on November 4, 2019 against the student and other accused namely Sanjai Singh, DP Singh, Vikram Singh and Sachin Singh for the offences of extortion, threatening under section 385, 506, 507 and 201 of IPC and section 67 A of IT Act. The special court had taken cognisance of the offences on November 6, 2019. The woman was granted bail in the extortion case in December while Chinmayanand, whose trust runs the Shahjahanpur law college where the woman studied, was granted bail by the Allahabad High Court in February this year in the case of sexual exploitation against him. The case against Chinmayanand was registered under Section 376-C of the IPC, an offence of 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 the offence of rape”. Chinmayanand also faced charges under Sections 342 (wrongful confinement), 354-D (stalking) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC.