3 min readJaipurFeb 1, 2017 06:00 AM IST
First published on: Feb 1, 2017 at 06:00 AM IST
The 37-year-old woman, who had accused former Rajasthan minister Babulal Nagar of rape, says she was not surprised by Nagar’s acquittal and would soon appeal the verdict in the High Court. A local court had on Monday acquitted Nagar, who was the minister of dairy and village industries in the previous Congress government, in the three-year-old rape case, giving him the benefit of doubt after the prosecution failed to establish his guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
Watch What Else Is Making News
Nagar had been in jail since October 2013, when the CBI arrested him. The woman, then an insurance agent, had accused Nagar of inviting her to his official residence on September 11, 2013 on the pretext of providing her a government job and then raping her.
“Minister or no minister, he is still a very powerful man. Just before the verdict was to be announced, the court premises looked like an election rally with numerous supporters, their SUVs.it was a show of strength, to intimidate me and my family,” the complainant told The Indian Express.
“I was not surprised. On January 18, I had submitted an affidavit in the court requesting the case to be transferred to another court as he could have influenced the proceedings here, but to no avail,” she said.
The woman also accused Nagar’s aides and family of trying to buy out a compromise and later, when she refused, of intimidating her.
“His family has constantly been pressurising me to submit an affidavit that it was consensual sex and not rape, or that the incident did not happen at all. But I told them I wouldn’t back out even if they killed my whole family,” she said.
“That is when they said that now you watch what we do and how we buy out the system and how Nagar will soon walk a free man,” she added. “They offered me Rs 7 crore to keep quiet. I could have taken the money and lived off comfortably. But this is not just my fight anymore. It is a struggle for justice to all the abused, exploited women in this country,” she said.
The woman said she was grateful to her family – including her son, two brothers and her sister-in-law- for standing by her and “facing the heat” of constant threats.
“On November 23, last year, after I had turned down all their overtures for a compromise, they had me attacked. Some goons came to my house early morning around 8 am, beat me up, stripped me and dragged me by my hair. When I filed a complaint with the Karni Vihar police station, they too filed a counter complaint,” she said.
Share
