india

Updated: Sep 13, 2019 00:54 IST

The father of the woman who has levelled harassment charges against former union minister Swami Chinmayanand has alleged that some of the evidence in the case has gone missing from her Shahjahanpur hostel room.

The room was sealed on the direction of the Supreme Court when the harassment charges came to light in August. It was visited by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) in the presence of the woman and her father on Tuesday.

This had followed the woman’s claim that she had kept evidence substantiating her allegations in her hostel room. However, when the sealed room was opened, the woman’s father said, “It appeared to have been searched before it was sealed. Some of the items that my daughter had kept inside as evidence were missing.”

For one, he said, “The camera that was used to record the politician’s activities was not there.”

Earlier, the father-daughter duo had claimed that a pen drive containing video proof had gone missing. However, on Wednesday, one of the woman’s friends submitted a pen drive to the SIT and the father claimed it carried evidence.

The father also questioned why the SIT had not questioned Chinmayanand regarding the matter yet. “We were questioned for over 11 hours by the SIT but it has not dared to even summon Chinmayanand for questioning,” he said.

The SIT has questioned the principals of the two colleges where the woman has studied. The principals, Avnish Mishra and Sanjay Baranwal, were summoned to the Shahjahanpur police lines and questioned individually for over four hours each. Both the institutions are run by Swami Chinmayanand’s trust.

Meanwhile, the SIT, headed by inspector general of police Naveen Arora, has maintained a distance from the press. Local police have also declined to comment on the case.

Chinmayanand was booked under Sections 364 (kidnapping or abducting in order to murder) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code on the woman’s father’s complaint naming the BJP leader.