Rape-accused UP minister Prajapati on the run; minor victim seeks justice
Uttar Pradesh minister Gayatri Prajapati, 49, is said to be on the run. An FIR was lodged against him and six accomplices under various sections of the IPC and The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act at Gautampalli police station by the order of the Supreme Court on February 18 for allegedly sexually assaulting a 16-year-old and for repeatedly gang-raping her mother with his aides.
The alleged gangrape of the girl’s mother was first committed in October 2014 and was repeated till July 2016. The woman wrote to the state’s police chief in October 2016, after the perpetrators allegedly tried to rape her daughter, seeking action against them. When her complaint went unheeded, she moved Supreme Court.
With the police hot on his heels now, Prajapati has moved the apex court seeking protection from arrest and recall of its earlier order. Prajapati, who is contesting the state assembly election as an SP candidate from Amethi, where polls are over, has denied the allegation, terming it a “political conspiracy by the BJP”. He has claimed he does not even know the victim.
The 16-year-old girl has been left scarred and lives in constant fear.
Eight months after the incident, the teenager is still to overcome the trauma and gets panic attacks, often waking up in the middle of night and trying to run away from her ward at the AIIMS in fits of frenzy. She fears Prajapati's men would come looking for her. She now anxiously wants to see the minister behind bars and justice done to herself and her mother.
“I want to see Prajapati and his men who attempted to rape me, behind bars. He has ruined our lives. We had to leave our hearth and home to save our lives,” she told PTI.
Her mother, who claimed to have been repeatedly gang-raped over two years on the promise of a position in the state’s ruling Samajwadi Party and sand mining contracts, moved Supreme Court, which ordered registration of an FIR against the minister and his accomplices in the crime on February 18.
As the UP police hunts for them, the girl is struggling to come to terms with what happened to her and her mother. She has, however, not given up hope and wants to appear for her class 10 examination next year. "I couldn’t take the exams this year .... our lives were in a mess.”
The girl shudders and slips into frequent pauses while recounting the horror. “They tried to rape me and held my mother tight as she kept crying and pleaded with them to stop. They threatened her with dire consequences before setting me free. After that we sought help from various quarters and even approached the state DGP, but nothing happened even after that. Meanwhile, constant threat calls from Prajapati’s men not to pursue the matter further became unbearable for us and we decided to leave UP to save our lives. My mother then approached court,” she said.
According to doctors at AIIMS who are treating her, the girl is in a state of “severe trauma”. They said teams of the UP police had visited the hospital a couple of times to speak to the girl but were denied permission.