The Bharatiya Janata Party in Gujarat was rocked by a rape allegation after a 21-year-old girl from Surat accused the party’s state Vice-President Jayanti Bhanushali of raping her multiple times since November 2017. A written compliant was lodged at Varaccha Police station by the survivor on 10 July. In response to the allegations, Bhanushali resigned from his post on 13 July.
Bhanushali, who was a BJP MLA from the Abdasa constituency in Kutch from 2007 to 2012, has claimed that the allegations are false and he is being framed as part of a political conspiracy. An FIR was finally filed on Thursday, 19 July, and the survivor has agreed to record her statement before a magistrate under CrPC Section 164. Bhanushali has not been arrested yet.
Bhanushali Allegedly Promised the Survivor Admission in a College
The Quint has a copy of the written complaint sent by the rape survivor to the police wherein she claimed that she met Bhanushali in 2017 through a relative as she wished to pursue fashion designing. Bhanushali told the survivor that she will get admission in any college of her liking and asked her to get copies of her marksheets, the survivor claimed.
In November 2017, Bhanushali allegedly called the survivor to Ahmedabad and asked her to get her original documents. The complaint further states that he took her in a black SUV and told her that he was headed to Gandhinagar for some official work. On the way they took a detour into a field alongside the highway and Bhanushali allegedly started molesting her.
When she raised an alarm, he allegedly threatened her with a knife and told her girls who come to him for admissions do this all the time. Bhanushali’s driver and assistant were present when the survivor was allegedly raped and one of them filmed the whole act.
‘Repeatedly Raped’
The complainant was allegedly told that if she reveals the incident to anyone, the video would be made viral. According to her complaint, she was again called to Ahmedabad in March this year where she was raped by Bhanushali at a hotel near the Ahmedabad airport. On 24 April 2018, Bhanushali’s men allegedly barged into the survivor’s house and made her sign a paper which claimed that she didn’t know the BJP leader.
The survivor claimed that she knows the person who made her sign the document but doesn’t know his name. She alleged that the man also gave her a pen drive which contained clips of her getting raped. She added that she finally spoke up about it as Bhanushali was forcing her to sleep with other men.
After the rape charges caused a media furore, the survivor was untraceable for a few days. Even the police could not locate her and had to stick a notice on her locked door. According to Surat Police Commisioner Satish Sharma, they had received another notarised letter from a woman who had the same name as the complainant, urging the police to ignore any complaint made against Bhanushali.
Finally, on 19 July, the survivor reached the office of the Commissioner of Police where to lodge her FIR, media persons and members of the Congress party were already present. The FIR was filed at Sarthana police station and charges of rape and abduction were levied against Bhanushali. The case has been assigned to Deputy Commissioner of Police Leena Patil.
According to Patil, the process of collecting evidence has commenced and the pen-drive which contained the videos has been recovered from the survivor and sent to FSL for further tests.
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