Home Entertainment India prajapati: UP ex-minister Gayatri Prajapati gets life imprisonment in gang-rape case | India News

prajapati: UP ex-minister Gayatri Prajapati gets life imprisonment in gang-rape case | India News

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prajapati: UP ex-minister Gayatri Prajapati gets life imprisonment in gang-rape case | India News

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LUCKNOW: A special (MP/MLA) court awarded life imprisonment on Friday to former UP minister Gayatri Prajapati and two of his accomplices — Ashok Tiwari and Ashish Shukla — in a gang-rape case. It also fined them Rs 2 lakh each.
Special judge PK Rai declined their plea to punish them with the minimum quantum of sentence. The three were present in court and were taken to jail to serve their life terms. They now have the option of moving the high court against the judgment and order passed by the special court, which had pronounced them guilty on Wednesday.
The prosecution had opposed the convicts’ plea for leniency in sentencing. “If a man in such a responsible post commits this kind of offence, misusing his power and position, the court should deal with him sternly in order to give a message to society,” the prosecution argued. Prajapati, who was the mining department minister in the then Akhilesh Yadav government, was arrested and sent to jail on March 15, 2017 on charges of raping a woman and attempting to rape her minor daughter. He has been in prison since then. Prajapati also faces multiple probes in the alleged mining scam in the state during his tenure as minister.
He was granted bail once but it was cancelled by the high court immediately, before he could walk out of jail. The HC had noted that there had been foul play in granting bail. Declaring Gayatri and the two others guilty two days ago, the special judge had said on Wednesday that the prosecution had succeeded in proving its case beyond reasonable doubt. The court had found all three guilty under IPC Sections 376 (D) and 5 (g) read with Section 6 of the Pocso Act. The court, however, acquitted Vikas Verma, Roopeshwar, Amrendra Singh, alias Pintu, and Chandrapal for lack of evidence. The prosecution had produced 17 witnesses in the case.
A senior police officer said that Ashish Shukla was the former minister’s aide, that he looked after his work in the state capital and was also an important link with his constituency in Amethi. On the other hand, Ashok Tiwari was a government officer posted as “lekhpal” in Amethi tehsil. He was suspended on March 5, 2017. The officer also said Tiwari kept all the mining records of the former minister. According to the police, the survivor was introduced to the minister in 2013 at his official residence by Ashok Tewari. Thereafter, during her meetings with the minister, Prajapati offered to allot her a license for sand mining. At one of the meetings, she was allegedly served tea laced with sedatives and raped while objectionable photographs were taken.



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