SC orders court-monitored probe in law student’s case, security for her family

A special team of Uttar Pradesh police will probe the apprehensions and grievances of the Shahjahanpur law student who went missing after accusing BJP leader Swami Chinmayanand of “destroying lives of several girls” in a video message on August 24.

The probe by a team of officers under an Inspector General of Police would be monitored by a bench of the Allahabad High Court, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court comprising justices R Banumathi and AS Bopanna ordered on Monday.

The top court has ordered the Yogi Adityanath government to transfer the law student to a college out of Shahjahanpur in eastern Uttar Pradesh and told the police to provide security to her family. The court has, however, underscored that it was not expressing any opinion on the correctness of the grievances and apprehensions of the young woman.

“We won’t monitor anything here anymore. We are retaining the matter only for the limited purpose to see her education is continued,” the court said.

The 23-year-old postgraduate student, who had been missing was found by the police in Rajasthan on Friday. She was being taken home by the police when the Supreme Court ordered the police to take a detour and bring her to Delhi instead.

The law student told the judges during a closed-door interaction late on Friday evening that she had left Shahjahanpur to protect herself and had indicated her discomfort at going back to Uttar Pradesh’s Shahjahanpur.

She also told the bench led by Justice B Banumathi that she wanted to stay in Delhi for some time. Her parents were subsequently escorted by a Delhi Police team to the national capital on the Supreme Court’s orders.

The woman’s family had earlier alleged that the police had tried to pressurise them to tone down their complaint against Swami Chinmayanand, the 72-year-old influential politician in eastern Uttar Pradesh. A three-time parliamentarian, Swami Chinmayanand was a minister of state for home affairs in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government.

The Uttar Pradesh police, which hasn’t questioned the BJP leader named by the woman’s family, had insisted that there was a link between the disappearance of the postgraduate law student and an alleged attempt to extort Rs 5 crore from Swami Chinmayanand. A senior UP police had also underscored that the woman, who appeared to have left Shahjanpur on her own, was found with a male friend.