The woman who accused politician and former union minister Chinmayanand of sexual assault, has been arrested on the charge of extortion by the special team probing the case, Wednesday.
The law student had moved a local court for protection against arrest but did not get any immediate relief. The court has listed the hearing for September 26, reports Hindustan Times.
“The woman was arrested from her residence and taken to hospital for medical examination. She was sent to jail on 14 days of judicial custody,” Inspector General of Police Naveen Arora, who heads the Special Investigation Team, told Hindustan Times.
Last week, the special probe team had arrested Chinmayanand on a complaint from the law student who has accused the BJP leader of rape and blackmail. That arrest coincided with the arrest of three more people for attempting to extort money from Chinmayanand. The woman is a co-accused in the case.
SIT chief Naveen Arora had then linked the woman to the three men, pointing out that the law student had been in constant touch with one of the accused, Sanjay Singh. The special team had counted 4,200 phone calls between the two this year.
“During the course of investigation, it was found that the girl was in constant touch with the main accused, Sanjay, and had exchanged over 4,200 calls with him this year. She was also found to be travelling with the accused on many occasions,” Arora said.
The accused reportedly recorded objectionable videos of Chinmayanand and threatened to leak them if he did not pay up ₹5 crore. The videos were allegedly recorded by the woman using a hidden camera attached to a pair of spectacles. “The spectacles with the hidden camera were brought online by the woman and were delivered to her at the college hostel. However, the spectacles were not recovered during the search of her hostel room,” said the SIT chief.
The officer also informed that Chinmayanand had deleted some messages that he had exchanged with the accused. “The mobile phone will be sent to Central Forensic Science Laboratory to recover the deleted messages,” said Arora.
On September 23, the woman had asked the Allahabad high court, which had been ordered by the Supreme Court to oversee investigations, for relief in the extortion case lodged against her. But the high court had redirected her to the appropriate court, telling her that it was only meant to monitor the probe and not grant relief.