Prajapati lands in police net, sent to 14day custody
A day after the cops detained his son and nephew, the absconding rape accused reportedly surrendered before the police
LUCKNOW: Police arrested former Uttar Pradesh minister and rape suspect Gayatri Prasad Prajapati from Lucknow on Wednesday morning, roughly two weeks after the Samajwadi Party (SP) leader went missing.
Prajapati was booked on a Supreme Court directive and an FIR was lodged on February 17 against the minister and six others for allegedly gangraping a woman and attempting to rape her minor daughter. He has been remanded to 14-day judicial custody. A look-out notice as well as a non-bailable warrant was issued against Prajapati. His passport too was impounded and airports across the country were alerted so that he could not flee the country.
Sources said Prajapati himself turned up before police after the noose was tightened around him by detaining his son Anurag and nephew Surendra from Amethi on Tuesday.
Inspector general (IG) of police, Lucknow zone, A Satish Ganesh said Prajapati was hiding at different locations in Haryana and West Bengal for the last 15 days. Before fleeing the state, he was hiding at various locations in Lucknow, Amethi, Kanpur and Allahabad, the officer added.
Prajapati was sacked by former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav from his cabinet in 2016 during a bruising feud with his father Mulayam Singh Yadav and uncle Shivpal Yadav. He was later reinstated, triggering outrage and denting the law-and-order plank that Akhilesh was running his poll campaign on.
In the just-concluded assembly elections, Prajapati lost from Amethi, the seat he held, to the BJP.
Prajapati was also made the target of many potshots by the BJP, which used the former minister to undercut the SP’s election campaign and alleged that Akhilesh wasn’t serious about apprehending criminals.
A 35-year-old woman had accused Prajapati of raping her when she met him three years ago. He is also accused of taking obscene photos of the victim and threatening her of making the pictures public and raping her for the past two years. However, Prajapati claimed it to be a conspiracy of the BJP in order to distract people’s attention from the assembly polls.
Prajapati, considered a favourite of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, enjoyed immense political clout during the SP government.