Justices R Banumathi and AS Bopanna spoke with the woman in closed court before continuing the hearing. Later, the judges announced that the woman was to be kept wherever she felt safe and comfortable. The Delhi Police has been asked to bring her parents to the capital. The Court said,
“She left her place with college friends for her protection. She doesn’t want to go back to UP till she meets her parents. She stated that she will decide her future course of plan after meeting them,”
Earlier, asking the UP government to give the information “within five minutes”, the Supreme Court had said,
“Find out her exact location now. How much time will she take to be present in court.”
Replying to the Court, the state government said the “exact location” of the woman was near Fatehpur Sikri and it would take her two and a half hours to reach Delhi.
The Supreme Court decided on Thursday to take up the case on its own after a group of lawyers raised concerns that it could turn into the another “Unnao” – the case involving Kuldeep Singh Sengar, an MLA expelled only recently from the BJP amid outrage, he is accused of raping a minor girl from his village in 2017 and then trying to murder her in a car crash. Fearing for the woman’s safety, the lawyer said,
“Only the police are making the statement but she has not been seen on TV,”
Chinmayananda’s lawyer called the allegations against him a “conspiracy”.
The woman, a law student, went missing on Saturday after posting a video on Facebook alleging that a “big leader of the Sant Samaj” had “destroyed the lives of many other girls and also has threatened to kill me”. She requested Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to help her. Based on her video, which went viral, her father blamed Chinmayanand, a former union minister who heads the management of the college where the woman studies.
The police filed the family’s case only on Tuesday, three days after she went missing, and charged Chinmayanand with kidnapping and criminal intimidation.
(Source: NDTV)
