Jaipur: On Monday, the Rajasthan police arrested Surinder Singh Rajput, the Congress councillor from Mohali, from his residence in Sector 70 in connection with a rape case. He was ‘absconding’ since the FIR was filed against him in Jaipur.
Rajput is accused of raping a 30-year-old woman at a hotel in Jaipur earlier this year while he was accompanying her to obtain bail for her husband.
According to the station house officer of Sadar police station Rajinder Singh Shekhawat, Rajput had promised he would help the woman obtain bail for her husband, who was booked under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, in Rajasthan about two years ago.
“The victim stated in her complaint that she lived in Rajput’s neighbourhood in Sector 70, Mohali, and her husband was arrested by Rajasthan police around two-and-a-half-years ago. Rajput approached the victim to help her in getting bail for her husband. She agreed and he took her to Jaipur and stayed with her in a hotel where he raped her,” Shekhawat told the Indian Express.
According to Hindustan Times, the councillor allegedly gave her some “medicine” to treat her headache. “Later, the woman fell unconscious and was allegedly raped. The woman alleged that the accused had been blackmailing her on the basis of an obscene video that he had recorded that night and kept sexually exploiting her for the past two years,” the newspaper reported.
The woman had claimed that she had filed a complaint on February 4, 2020, along with her husband, with the Mataur police station against Rajput. The police allegedly refused to register an FIR over the jurisdiction dispute and asked her to approach the Jaipur police.
She and her husband approached the Rajasthan police, where an FIR was registered against Rajput under section 376 (rape) of the Indian Penal Code at Sadar police station in Jaipur last month.
“After receiving the complaint, we verified the facts and checked with the hotel concerned. It was found that the crime was committed. Investigation is in progress,” he added.
He was taken to Jaipur after due formalities and would be produced before a court in Jaipur on Tuesday.
Rajput was elected councillor in February 2015. He has a wife and two children.
A Mohali Congress leader, Deepinder Singh Dhillon, said that if Rajpur is convicted, the party will “take disciplinary action against him”. Mohali MLA Balbir Singh Sidhu, who is a cabinet minister, told HT that though he was not aware of the case, “if anyone, be it from any party, has done anything wrong, he or she should be punished as per law”.