NOIDA: Ashok Pradhan, a four-time BJP MP from Khurja and now a senior Samajwadi Party functionary, has been booked in a rape and attempt to murder case after a 24-year-old woman embroiled in a marital dispute filed a police complaint against him. The woman has also named her husband, parents-in-law, sister-in-law and one more person in the complaint.
The FIR was filed by Noida police under sections 354 and 376 (rape), 307 (attempt to murder) and various other sections of the IPC after Delhi Police registered a Zero FIR and forwarded it. “We are conducting an investigation into the case,” said RN Verma, the investigating officer. Pradhan, a former Union minister who quit BJP to join SP in 2014, denied the allegations, saying this was a dispute between two families he knew and his name had been dragged into this to malign him.
The woman claims her abuse started nearly eleven months ago, just a year after she got married and started living with her husband and his family in Noida. She alleges she was raped by Pradhan in the house and, on another occasion, by her father-in-law who spiked her drink with sedatives. She claims she moved out of the house to escape the abuse. She also accuses Pradhan of threatening to get her family members killed if she told anyone about the sexual assault.
