LUCKNOW: A day after the Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court stayed the order granting bail to rape accused Samajwadi Party leader Gayatri Prajapati, the Additional Sessions Judge of Protection of Children against Sexual Offence (POCSO) court, OP Mishra, who had issued the bail orders for the former minister and his two accomplices, was suspended on Saturday. The court has also initiated a departmental inquiry against Mishra.
According to sources, Justice Sudhir Agarwal has been told to conduct the probe against the judge. Mishra had granted bail to Prajapati on two sureties of Rs 1 lakh each and a personal bond of Rs 1 lakh on April 25. Besides, the bail order for the release of his two accomplices – Vivek Verma, son of an SDM, and Pintu Singh – was also issued same day on same conditions. While Prajapati could not be released on the bail granted to him owing to two other earlier cases in which the police had demanded his judicial remand, his two aides were released on bail on early Wednesday, April 26, 2017.
The State government on Friday had approached the High Court with the request to stay the order granting bail to the tainted minister. The prosecution had submitted in the court that Gayatri Prajapati was granted bail by the lower court on April 25, without taking into consideration facts and circumstances of the case.
Prajapati and his six aides were booked on charges of gang raping a woman (35), a councillor from Chitrakoot, and also molesting her minor daughter at his official residential in State capital consistently from 2014 to 2016. The FIR in the case was registered by UP police on February 18 following Supreme Court order of February 17, 2017.
After eluding the police net for almost a month, Prajapati was arrested by UP police on March 15 from a locality in Lucknow. In its quest to arrest Prajapati, UP police had to issue a non-bailable warrant against him, issue a look out notice and cancel his passport to ensure that he did not leave the country to evade his arrest in the case.
Gayatri Prajapati had contested the recently concluded UP Assembly elections on SP ticket from Amethi and lost it to BJP’s Rani Garima Singh.