LUCKNOW: The Shahjahanpur law student who had been missing since Sunday after levelling charges of harassment and sexual abuse against former Union minister Swami Chinmayanand was traced in Rajasthan along with a friend, said UP DGP OP Singh here on Friday.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court, which had taken cognisance of the issue, has asked the UP government to bring the woman to Delhi immediately. Police authorities took her to the apex court which held a hearing taking suo motu notice of the case.
The DGP said that the woman was found with one of her friends Sanjay Singh in a hotel in Rajasthan. She was sharing a room with Singh who is a former law student of the same college. “Both the girl and her friend were traced by a police team on Friday morning and the girl is fine. Legal proceedings in the case are on,” said the DGP.
Incidentally, the law student was found on the day the Supreme Court had taken cognizance of the issue and was about to hear the case. The DGP said that seven teams of police personnel were set up to trace the woman. Police teams including the Special Task Force (STF) had been visiting Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, UP and Rajasthan after monitoring her location through electronic surveillance of her mobile data.
She had been frequently changing her location, said the DGP adding that a thorough probe would be conducted into the case to find out the veracity of her allegations and also that of the accused Swami Chinmayanand. “Strict action would be initiated in the case,” said the DGP.
The LLM student, 23, had alleged in a video clip that Chinmayanand, the director of SS Law College in Shahjahanpur where she studied, was threatening to kill her and her family members as she had evidence that could land him in trouble.
Through the video, she had reached out to PM Modi and UP Yogi Adityanath for help. She went missing a day after posting the video though the college authorities claimed that she was not attending classes since August 5. Addressing the media, DIG Rajesh Kumar Pandey said that the law student was traced by a Special Crime Branch team.
Pandey also said that the police were investigating the link between the disappearance of the girl and the extortion messages sent on the mobile phone of Swami Chinmayanand on August 22.
Chinmayanand, meanwhile, had claimed that a conspiracy was being hatched against him by four men and the missing woman to malign his image and that he had done no wrong. He had even got an FIR registered against some unidentified persons on charges of blackmail and extortion.
DIG Pandey also claimed that the police were trying to take Swami’s statement but he was missing from his Ashram.
However, the Shahjahanpur SP S Chanappa had registered an FIR against Chinmayanand under IPC sections 364 (kidnapping or abducting in order to murder) and 506 (criminal intimidation) based on a complaint by the woman’s father on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, while the National Commission of Women had got in touch with the aggrieved family and assured them of the safe return of their daughter, the Uttar Pradesh Women Commission had also sought a report from the Shahjahanpur district administration on the student's disappearance.
"We have taken note of the incident and sought a report in this regard from the district magistrate and superintendent of police of Shahjahanpur. We are awaiting the report and will ensure that she returns safely," UPWC Chief Vimla Batham said.