India: Former UP minister and accused rapist Gayatri Prajapati remanded to 14-days judicial custody

 Gayatri Prasad Prajapati

Lucknow, Sep 11 (PTI) Former Uttar Pradesh minister Gayatri Prasad Prajapati was on Friday remanded to 14-days judicial custody by a local court, a day after an FIR was lodged against him on charges of fraud, forgery and criminal intimidation.

A senior police official told PTI that Prajapati, who was granted interim bail for two months on September 4 by the Allahabad High Court in a gang rape case, was in judicial custody as he could not fulfil bail conditions.

The official said that Prajapati was remanded to 14-days custody of Lucknow Police in connection with the new case lodged against him at Ghazipur police station on Thursday.

Earlier, the former minister, along with others, was accused of raping a woman and attempting to molest her minor daughter. He was jailed on March 15, 2017 and is currently undergoing treatment for various ailments at KGMU.

On Thursday, Dinesh Chandra Tripathi, the former lawyer of the alleged gangrape survivor, lodged an FIR against Prajapati, the woman and her daughter on charges of fraud, forgery and criminal intimidation.

The lawyer alleged that he had a received a threat on telephone from Prajapati earlier.

In the FIR, the lawyer claimed that the woman and her daughter turned hostile in the rape case after receiving several benefits, including two houses and two plots from Prajapati.

He alleged that the woman tried to frame him in a rape case after he refused to aid her in misusing the law for blackmailing people.

On September 4, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court granted two months' interim bail to Prajapati on medical grounds. The gangrape case was lodged with Gautampalli police station in 2017. Thereafter, he was arrested and sent to jail.