Special Correspondent
NewsBits.in
Bhopal: A special court in Bhopal on Monday framed charges of sodomy and criminal intimidation against former finance minister of Madhya Pradesh Raghavji Sanwla and two of his associates.
Raghavji, now 81, has been a senior RSS leader of the region. The court of judge DK Paliwal framed charges under IPC section 377 (unnatural sexual offence) and 506 (criminal intimidation) against the ex-minister and two of his accomplices Sher Singh and Suresh Singh.
The trial would begin on August 12. The complaint had been filed by one Rajkumar Dangi in June 2013, charging the minister of sexually exploiting him for over duration of over three years.
Before this a series of 22 CDs showing the minister in unnatural act with Rajkumar had surfaced. After the police complaint, Raghavji, till then a very senior and respected minister was sacked from cabinet and arrested. He is currently out on bail.
The CDs had been prepared and made public ahead of the assembly elections in the state in 2013. Shivshankar Pateriya, the BJP leader who made the CDs said that he wanted to expose the sleaze within the party.
Rajkumar, the victim, had claimed that the ex-minister ‘seduced’ him with offer of a good government job through state public service commission, but later got him a private job. Meanwhile, the minister and two members of his staff continued to sodomise Rajkumar and made him perform other unnatural sexual acts.
Despite his age of 78, the minister would ‘never be tired of the act’ and used aphrodisiacs, the complainant had claimed.
The ex-minister had cried innocence and the court was looking into the different evidences in the case. On Monday, the court finalized the charges against the minister, which means that Raghavji faces minimum ten years in prison and maximum of life imprisonment.
