Samajwadi Party's ex-Minister Prajapati booked for criminal intimidation

Lucknow: Former Samajwadi Party Minister Gayatri Prajapati has another FIR lodged against him on the complaint of a rape complainant's former lawyer Dinesh Chandra Tripathi, police said on Friday.

Prajapati had been arrested in 2017 on the rape charge and recently bailed out for two months on medical grounds.

Ghazipur SHO Brijesh Kumar Singh said the FIR was lodged on the charges of dishonesty, criminal intimidation, forgery for the purpose of cheating, and fraudulently using a document against the former Cabinet minister and the Chitrakoot-based woman, her daughter, and her unidentified accomplices.

In the FIR lodged at the Ghazipur police station on Thursday, Tripathi said that the woman complainant had asked him in February 2019 to submit an affidavit in favour of Prajapati and other co-accused in the gang-rape case and when he opposed the same, she threatened him with dire consequences.

Tripathi alleged that on March 26, 2019, she got news published against him in newspapers and hired other advocates for her case.

The lawyer claimed that she took money, plots, and houses from Prajapati in return for turning hostile in the case.

Tripathi alleged that when he dubbed her conduct against the spirit of law and justice, she lodged a case against him in Chitrakoot on June 19.

"Police did not find anything substantial and submitted its final report in the case," he said.

"In connivance with Prajapati, she then lodged a rape case against me at Gautampalli police station on July 7, 2019. She took a plot worth Rs 1.5 crore in Aashiana locality to make her daughter also turn hostile in the case against Prajapati," he alleged.

Tripathi further accused the woman of asking him to talk to Prajapati when the latter was in jail.

"Prajapati threatened to get me killed once he came out. The woman also threatened to get me killed by Prajapati's men once he was out of jail. Now, unidentified miscreants chase me when I go out for work and when I return home," Tripathi claimed, seek protection from the police.

The woman had lodged an FIR against Tripathi on the charges of rape, sexual assault, causing hurt by poisoning, dishonesty, wrongful confinement, and POCSO Act, 2012 on December 27, 2019.