‘Victim’ backtracks in rape case against Langah
‘NOT ME IN VIDEO’ Claims that police pressured her to sign blank paper that was later used to write a complaint, and that the CD has been forged too
: In what could lead to the rape and extortion case against former Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) minister Sucha Singh Langah falling flat, the complainant on Wednesday backtracked, telling the court that she was not the woman in the video that is at the core of the matter, and that police had pressured her to levy the charges.
Langah, 61, a former MLA from Dera Baba Nanak segment in Gurdaspur district, was booked on September 29 last year, 11 days ahead of the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha bypoll that the state’s ruling Congress won against SAD’s ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
: In what could lead to the rape and extortion case against former Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) minister Sucha Singh Langah falling flat, the complainant on Wednesday backtracked, telling the court that she was not the woman in the video that is at the core of the matter, and that police had pressured her to levy the charges.
Langah, 61, a former MLA from Dera Baba Nanak segment in Gurdaspur district, was booked on September 29 last year, 11 days ahead of the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha bypoll that the state’s ruling Congress won against SAD’s ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It hit the SAD-BJP alliance, which had lost the assembly polls in February last year, hard because Langah was considered its backbone in the region.
The FIR said the woman, who is a police constable, charged Langah with raping her repeatedly since 2009 using his influence as a top leader of the SAD, which later ousted him as she had even submitted a CD with a 20-minute video showing Langah having sex purportedly with her. She had also accused Langah of selling her properties using his political pressure.
On Wednesday, though, according to a police officer present there, she told the court of additional district and sessions judge, Gurdaspur: “I am not in the CD that was attached with my forged complaint. This CD has been tempered with by using my face. Rather, the entire complaint is baseless and is a police theory.”
She said she was made to sign a blank paper by police that was later used to make up the complaint, even though the FIR said she had gone to Gurdaspur’s senior superintendent of police (SSP), HS Bhullar, with a complaint
and the CD. She claimed that said she’d been threatened to give the statement about the allegations before a magistrate, which had made it further admissible as proof.
She denied having known Langah personally, though her written statement earlier said she was a former classmate of Langah’s daughter. “She told the court that she knew my client as a
politician only, through posters and banners,” Langah’s lawyer Santokh Singh Basra told HT.
Langah, in light of the allegations, was not only thrown out of the SAD but, as he was member of top Sikh organisation Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), temporal seat Akal Takht excommunicated him from the community.
He surrendered at the Gurdaspur court on October 4, and charges were framed on February 14 under sections 376 (rape), 384 (extortion), 420 (cheating) and 506 (intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code.
Meanwhile, Langah has applied for bail at the Punjab and Haryana high court that is to be heard on March 5. The district deferred the trial hearing to March 12.