A special court here on Friday awarded former Uttar Pradesh Minister Gayatri Prajapati and two others life imprisonment for raping a woman. The court also imposed a fine of ₹2 lakh on each convict.
Prajapati and two others — Ashok Tiwari and Ashish Shukla — were present in the court when it pronounced the judgment.
Judge P.K. Rai had on Wednesday held Prajapati, a key figure in the Akhilesh Yadav government, and his accomplices guilty of raping the woman and also trying to rape her minor daughter.
It said the prosecution has been able to prove charges against them beyond a reasonable doubt.
However, the court acquitted four others — Vikas Verma, Roopeshwar, Amrendra Singh, alias Pintu, and Chandrapal — due to lack of evidence.
The prosecution had produced 17 witnesses in the case.
The court also directed the Lucknow Police Commissioner to ascertain the circumstances under which the woman and two other witnesses had changed their statements during the trial.
Prajapati was arrested in March 2017.
The FIR against him was registered at the Gautampalli police station here on the directions of the Supreme Court, which gave its order on the woman’s plea against the police inaction over her complaint. Prajapati has been in jail since the registration of the FIR. The woman had claimed that Prajapati and his accomplices had been raping her since October 2014 and she decided to lodge a complaint after they tried to molest and rape her minor daughter in July 2016.
