Akhilesh Yadav comes out in support of rape-accused minister Gayatri Prajapati, to campaign for him in Amethi

Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav will arrive at Amethi on Monday where he will campaign for senior party minister and rape-accused Gayatri Prajapati. 

A Samajwadi Party leader, Prajapati is accused of repeatedly gang-raping a woman along with his associates and molesting her minor daughter. 

On Friday, an FIR was registered against the minister on the orders of the Supreme Court, which has also sought a police report within eight weeks.

 

Denying his involvement in the crime, Prajapati had called it a "political conspiracy at the behest of the BJP to tarnish his image." However, he admitted knowing the woman who had made the allegations against him. 

Prajapati has earlier been accused of promoting illegal mining and was sacked as minister last year by Akhilesh Yadav over corruption charges but was reinstated at the insistence of the Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav.

The Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister had started his polls campaign for the state with Prajapati by his side in Sultanpur, where the minister is the Samajwadi Party candidate. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had raised questions to that during a public rally on Sunday when he said, "Akhilesh, you started your election campaign by campaigning for Gayatri Prajapati. The people of Uttar Pradesh wants to know if your Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance is as pure as Gayatri Prajapati."

Modi further took a dig at Akhilesh Yadav by pointing out that the highest court had to intervene to have an FIR registered against the minister after the rape victim failed to convince the Uttar Pradesh Police to register a case on her complaint. 

"Rapists are given a free hand and women have to knock the doors of the Supreme Court for justice. What work have you done Akhilesh ji? Your minister is in a rape case. This is not 'kaam' but 'kaarnama'."

Amethi will go to polls next week in the fifth phase of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. The counting of votes will take place on March 11.