AMN / -In a new twist in the case related to the alleged burning to death of Shahjahanpur journalist Jagendra Singh, the woman whose rape allegations against minister Ram Murti Verma had triggered the sequence of events has now withdrawn her allegations.
She said that it was Jagendra Singh who had asked her to file a fake case to extort money from the minister. In her affidavit submitted at the court of the chief judicial magistrate (CJM), the woman, an anganwadi worker, alleged that she had filed the rape case against the state backward class welfare minister at the behest of the late Singh, with whom she was related by family. In the affidavit, she withdrew the rape charges against the minister and three others including the inspector of Sadar Kotwali, Sri Prakash Rai. The woman added that she had become indebted to Singh, who had helped her on several occasions, and was forced to file a case against the minister at the journalist’s instigation. At that time, she alleged, Singh had promised to give a share of the money which he would extract from the minister and the co-accused after the filing of the case.
Hearing the petition, CJM Rajeshwari Toliya ordered that the rape case, filed in her court on May 28 this year, be dismissed, taking into account the fact that the victim through her counsel had herself expressed the desire to do so. In her original complaint, the woman had alleged that inspector Rai and some close aides of the minister had abducted her on May 5 and taken her to the state PWD guest house in the city, where the minister and his associates had gangraped her.