Varanasi court refuses to give more time to rape accused Atul Rai

Rajeev Dikshit | TNN | Updated: Jun 4, 2019, 20:27 IST

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VARANASI: The chief judicial magistrate-I court on Tuesday rejected the surrender plea of Atul Rai, the Bahujan Samaj Party leader, who won Ghosi parliamentary seat despite being a rape accused and an absconder, as he did not turn up before it to surrender.
The court also turned down the application of his lawyer to extend date for his surrender. Court had already given him dates on May 28 and June 4 to surrender. SSP Anand Kulkarni said that now the process to seek court order to attach the property of Rai will be started by police.
On Tuesday his lawyer Anuj Yadav produced another application before the court to extend the date for Rai’s surrender. Yadav in his application mentioned that when Rai was heading to Varanasi in his vehicle to surrender before the court he suffered serious leg injuries in a road mishap at Jamania in Ghazipur.
Taking serious note of it the CJM-I Ashutosh Tiwari termed it a bid of Rai to linger the process. He gave time till 3.30pm to Yadav to produce medical certificate in this regard. However, when Yadav failed to produce medical certificate in given time the court rejected the application for extending date for Rai to surrender.
Rai was declared absconder by Lanka police on May 20, inspector Bharat Bhushan mentioning that efforts are on to arrest him. Rai on May 2 was booked on charges of rape and fraud at Lanka police station in Varanasi on the complaint of a Ballia girl. He was booked under sections 376 (rape), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of IPC.

Leaving responsibility of his poll campaign to wife Priyanka Rai and brother Pavan Rai he absconded and tried to get relief like stay against his arrest from Allahabad High Court and Supreme Court. However, on rejection of his plea he gave application in Varanasi court for surrender on May 17.
Despite being absconder Rai succeeded in defeating BJP candidate Harinarain Rajbhar.