Shahjahanpur Court dismisses bail plea of Chinmayanand, law student

New Delhi, September 30: A district court of Uttar Pradesh on Monday has dismissed the bail pleas of BJP leader Chinmayanand and the student who had accused him of sexual harassment.

The law student who had accused Chinmayanand of sexual harassment was sent to 14-day judicial custody on Sep 25 on charges of demanding extortion money from him.

"District judge Rambabu Sharma heard the bail application of Swami Chinmayanand, and also the bail plea of the girl in the extortion case. The court dismissed both the bail applications," said government counsel Anuj Kumar Singh as quoted by news agency PTI.

Following the rejection of Chinmayanand's bail plea, his advocate Om Singh said that an appeal will be filed in the Allahabad High Court.

Chinmayanand is also serving his 14-day-judicial custody after being arrested in the case.

On September 21, the SIT had booked the law student and three of her friends for extortion and removing evidence. The Allahabad High Court had on Monday refused to grant a stay on possible arrest to the law student.

Last week, the special probe team had arrested Chinmayanand on a complaint from the law student who has accused the BJP leader of rape and blackmail. However, the police had also arrested three other men for allegedly trying to extort money from the former Union minister. The student was also booked on the same charge.

The case

A postgraduate student, who studied at a college run by Chinmayanand's ashram, has alleged that she was raped and physically exploited by the 72-year-old for over a year.

In the video posted on Facebook, the girl states that she is pursuing LLM from SS College. " A big leader of the saint society, who has destroyed the lives of several girls, has been threatening me with life," she can be heard as saying in the video.

Chinmayanand was arrested on Friday in the case. He has been booked under sections 354 D (stalking), 342 (wrongful confinement) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code.

Instead of IPC Section 376 (rape), he has been booked under IPC Section 376 C, which is usually applied in cases where a person abuses his position to "induce or seduce" a woman under his charge to have "sexual intercourse not amounting to the offence of rape".

Chinmayananda was a three-time BJP MP and minister of state for internal security in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 199