A special court in Lucknow on Wednesday convicted former Uttar Pradesh minister Gayatri Prajapati and two others in a gangrape case. Four other accused in the case were acquitted. Additional District and Session Judge Pawan Kumar Rai of the MP/MLA court has fixed November 12 for the sentencing. The court also ordered a probe to find out why the rape victim and two witnesses were turning hostile in the case. Prajapati, who was a minister in the previous Samajwadi Party government, was booked in the gangrape case in February 2017 on the directions of the Supreme Court after a woman alleged that the SP leader had raped her on two occasions and also tried to molest her minor daughter. Lucknow district government counsel, Manoj Kumar Tripathi, said two others convicted along with Prajapati are Ashish Shukla and Ashok Tiwari. While Shukla is a former revenue clerk in Amethi, Tiwari worked as a contractor. The four acquitted in the case are Rupesh, who was the additional personal secretary to Prajapati and was employed at the Secretariat in Lucknow, Chandrapal, Pinto Singh and contractor Vikas Sharma. While Chandrapal is a suspended police constable, Pinto Singh was Prajapati's representative in Amethi.
