Jayesh Patel, founder of Parul University in Vadodara and a prominent local Bharatiya Janata Party leader, has been accused of rape and sexual harassment by a 22-year-old student of his university. He faces arrest, but has gone underground.

In the first information report (FIR) filed by the nursing student, she stated that she was taken at night to Patel's residence, which is next to the university’s women’s hostel, where he raped her, and “threatened to expel me from the college and fail in the exam if I revealed it to anyone.”

“The complaint was lodged and the medical report has confirmed that the complainant was raped. We have formed four teams to nab the accused,” said a Vadodara rural police officer.

On Sunday evening, the police arrested the rector of Parul University's women’s hostel, Bhavna Patel, in connection with the case.

Meanwhile, a former student of the university Aeshra Patel, a Mumbai-based model, has also alleged that Patel had “tortured her mentally and physically” when she was a student there in 2005-06. “He almost finished my career. I wanted to become a doctor and had taken admission into physiotherapy college. Due to his torture, I had to leave midway,” she told The Hindu .

“I had to lock myself up in a bathroom to save in a club in Ahmedabad. He tried his best to finish me.”

Patel, 66, was earlier with the Congress and had contested assembly polls twice. Following the complaint, “We have suspended him from the party,” said Vadodara district BJP president Dilubha Chudasama. On Monday, Patel also resigned as president of Parul University.

The 22-year-old nursing student

said Patel threatened

to expel her from

the college