Chinmayanand’s judicial custody extended till Oct 16

LUCKNOW: The Shahjahanpur court on Thursday extended former union minister Swami Chinmayanand’s judicial custody till October 16. The court will hear the plea of the special investigation team (SIT) seeking accused persons’ custody on Friday. The SIT had moved an application to take the accused to Lucknow for voice sampling.

Chinmayanand was produced before the court through video conferencing on Thursday evening. Earlier on September 30, the district court had refused him bail, observing the offence as ‘grave’ in nature.

After ensuring that Chinmayanand, who is accused of sexual assault and the complainant woman who is accused of attempt to extort money, do not get bail, the SIT filed an application in the court seeking custody of all five accused (Chinmayanand, the woman and three others), to take them to Lucknow for voice sampling. The court will hear the matter on Friday when counsels of the accused are expected to oppose the request.

WHY SIT WANTS THEIR CUSTODY

Earlier, the SIT submitted before the district court that it had to gather more information from the electronic evidence in both cases.

Some video clips surfaced during the investigations which were made the case property, besides

the 64-GB pen drive given by the woman.

In the videos that also went viral, there are some ‘obscene conversations’ allegedly between the woman and Chinmayanand.

Another video that surfaced during the probe features the woman along with four people in a car allegedly talking about the extortion message that Chinmayanand got on August 22.