Atul Rai has been in jail since 2019 in connection with the rape case. A local court in Varanasi has issued a non-bailable warrant against a 24-year-old woman, who had accused BSP MP Atul Rai of sexually assaulting her, in a forgery case.
The case was registered last November on a complaint lodged by Rai’s brother who alleged that the woman had forged documents to hide her date of birth. Rai, an MP from Ghosi in Mau, is in jail since June 2019 in connection with the rape case.
Police, which registered the forgery case against the woman on the court’s directive, said they sought a non-bailable warrant against her as she “remained untraceable despite several raids”. “The court on Monday issued a non-bailable warrant against the woman,” said Station House Officer (Varanasi Cantonment Police Station) Rakesh Kumar Singh.
In his complaint, the BSP MP’s brother, Pawan Kumar, claimed that the woman had produced her high school marksheet while getting an FIR registered against a student leader on charges of molestation in 2015. “In the marksheet, her date of birth was shown as March 10, 1997. But four years later (in 2019) when she got a rape case registered against MP Atul Rai, she submitted her high school marksheet in which her date of birth was mentioned as June 10, 1997,” said a police officer quoting Pawan Kumar’s complaint.
On the court’s directive, police registered an FIR against the woman and her associate under IPC sections 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc), 468 (purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy).
In 2015, the woman had accused a student leader Amretesh Singh alias Sabal of molesting her. In 2019, the woman, a resident of Mau, filed a case against Atul Rai alleging that the BSP MP was sexually harassing her for nearly a year after she went to his apartment in Varanasi’s Lanka area. She had also alleged that Rai had made a video and threatened to circulate it on social media.
Meanwhile, Sub-Inspector Girja Shankar, the Investigating Officer in the forgery case, said the probe is underway and they are looking for the woman.
- The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards.
