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Updated: Aug 29, 2019 23:07 IST

The Supreme Court has decided to take up the case of the Uttar Pradesh law student from Shahjahanpur who went missing after accusing BJP leader Swami Chinmayanand Saraswati of threats and harassment. The case, taken up by a bench led by Justice R Banumathi on the court’s motion, will be heard on Friday.

Chinmayanand, who has been a three-time MP, is also a former union minister of state for home affairs.

The young woman’s family has accused the police of soft-pedaling the probe because of the involvement of the BJP leader. The police had registered the case only after a video posted by the woman on Facebook before she went missing made national headlines.

In the widely-circulated video, the woman accused “a big leader of the saint society” of threatening her and “destroying the lives of several girls”. She didn’t name Chinmayanand in this video. Her father, who filed a police complaint, however, accused the BJP leader who has a sprawling ashram in Shahjahanpur and runs several colleges in the eastern UP town.

The young woman’s father told NDTV that the police wanted him to change his complaint, triggering comparisons with UP police’s handling of another powerful UP politician Kuldeep Singh Sengar’s case. Sengar, who was facing rape and murder charges, was finally thrown out of the BJP after the Supreme Court got into the picture this year.

Chinmayanand has also alluded to the Kuldeep Sengar case, suggesting he too was falsely charged with rape.

“Earlier Kuldeep Singh Sengar was implicated in a similar case and now I am being targeted,” Chinmayanand had said before he headed for his ashram in Haridwar over 300 km away. His aides said he had taken a vow of silence, or ‘maun vrath’ and gone for meditation.