UP minister booked for bid to frame activist, husband in rape cases

Uttar Pradesh Mining Minister Gayatri Prajapati was booked on a complaint by social activist Nutan Thakur for trying to frame her and her IPS husband Amitabh Thakur in false cases of rape, police told a court here on Thursday.

Uttar Pradesh State Women's Commission chairperson Jarina Usmani, member Ashok Pandey and some policemen have also been named in the first information report.

After the chief judicial magistrate asked for an explanation, police said a First Information Report (FIR) (417/2015) was lodged under Sections 467, 468, 471, 420, 203, 120B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) at Gomtinagar police station.

The case was probed by sub-inspector Krishna Bali Singh, the court was told.

A ccording to the FIR, after Thakur filed a complaint against Prajapati before the Lokayukta, she was warned to stay away from this case.

Later, attempts were made to implicate the couple in false cases on the basis of complaints of rape by unknown women presented before the women's commission.

While the address of the woman complainant from Etah was found to be false, different signatures were found on documents pertaining to the woman complainant from Ghaziabad.

Nutan Thakur submitted an application for an FIR to Gomtinagar police on June 10 and another application to Deputy Inspector General of Police (Lucknow) R.K. Chaturvedi the next day.

The couple also met the then Director General of Police A.K. Jain on June 15. They sat on a dharna in front of the DGP office on June 19 after which the FIR was surreptitiously lodged on June 20. However, this fact was hidden even from the complainants.

The information on the FIR was revealed only when police presented a report to the Lucknow chief judicial magistrate's court on a complaint filed by the social activist on Thursday.

"The whole affair smacked of a large political conspiracy to give a clean chit to the minister and quietly bury the case. We are the complainant but were not even informed about the FIR," Nutan Thakur told IANS.