The Supreme Court on Thursday said no accused in a sexual harassment case was entitled to access a woman complainant’s statement recorded by a magistrate under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code till the trial court took cognisance of the chargesheet. The ruling came in a much discussed case involving former minister Swami Chinmayanand, who had been MoS home in the Vajpayee government. A bench of Justices U U Lalit, Vineet Saran and S Ravindra Bhat disapproved of an Allahabad HC decision to give a copy of a girl’s statement recorded under Section 164 CrPC to Chinmayanand, accused of sexual harassment by the complainant, who was a student in a Shahjahanpur law college managed by the ashram run by the former minister. The Supreme Court said, "The filing of the chargesheet by itself does not entitle an accused to copies of any of the relevant documents, including statement under Section 164 of the Code. No person is entitled to a copy of the statement recorded under Section 164 of the Code till the appropriate orders are passed by the court after the chargesheet is filed." Like the Hathras case which has attracted massive media coverage, the allegation of sexual assault by the former minister had gone viral after the girl made a social media post accusing Chinmayanand of ruining the lives of many girls. Chinmayanand had dismissed the charge as blackmail tactics and counter-alleged that Rs 5 crore demand was made with the threat that non-payment would lead to ruining his reputation. The SC had suo motu taken cognisance of the incident on August 30 last year, the day the girl was traced to Dausa, Rajasthan.