New Delhi/Mumbai/Ranchi: The National Commission for Women (NCW) has taken cognizance of reported rape allegation against Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren and one more person by a Mumbai-based model. However, JMM, the ruling party in Jharkhand of which Soren is the working president, criticised the NCW and said the allegation against the CM is a "false case".
Meanwhile, NCW chief Rekha Sharma has written to the director general of police (DGP) of Maharashtra seeking a detailed action taken report of the case which was filed in 2013. The commission has also tweeted, "@NCWIndia has come across media report regarding a model who has alleged that she was raped by @HemantSorenJMM in 2013 and she and her family received threats against speaking about the alleged incident in public. Chairperson @sharmarekha has written to @DGPMaharashtra seeking detailed action taken report of the case filed in 2013 at the earliest."
The commission also released a statement in this regard. "It is also reported that the viral letter, reportedly written by the survivor, contains details of incidents that have occurred in the last seven years," the statement read.
The statement was referring to the email sent by the model to the Bandra police station seeking to lodge an FIR against Soren for the alleged sexual assault at a star hotel in Bandra in 2013. She had then lodged a complaint with the metropolitan magistrate here but withdrew it following threats. She said she was prompted to lodge a complaint after receiving threats.
Deputy commissioner of police (Zone IX) of Maharashtra Abhishek Trimukhe said, “We have received the complaint and the Bandra police is probing and verifying the facts before deciding the further course of action. We did not receive any letter or any direction from the NCW in this particular matter.”
Reacting to NCW's tweet, JMM central general secretary Supriyo Bhattacharya said Soren has already filed a defamation case against BJP MP Nishikant Dubey and social media platforms — Facebook and Twitter — in a local court for the "false propaganda".
He said, “This is the dirty politics of BJP and they are targeting a CM with baseless allegations and NCW has joined hands."
Bhattacharya further said, “If it was not politics, why should it (NCW) tweet the allegations without investigation or before seeking a report from the Maharashtra Police?”
He claimed that the case has already been closed by the Maharashtra Police after it found the allegations to be baseless.
On August 4, Soren had filed the defamation case worth Rs 100 crore each against the defedants in the Ranchi civil court. The court of sub-judge I Vaishali Srivastava last heard the matter on December 15 and fixed December 21 as the next date of hearing.
Soren also filed two injunctions seeking restraints against Dubey, his agents and aides from tweeting against him. Dubey's lawyers had sought time to file replies to the injunctions.