Former AAP minister Sandeep Kumar sent to police custody

New Delhi, September 4  

Advertisement

A Delhi court on Sunday sent sacked AAP minister Sandeep Kumar to one-day police custody, a day after he was arrested on charges of rape followed by the complaint of a woman who figured in a video with him in an objectionable position.

Sandeep Kumar was produced before a duty magistrate in Rohini court on Sunday afternoon which sent him to police custody on the plea of Delhi Police seeking his remand for the further investigation of the case.

Meanwhile, wife of the sacked minister came out in support of her husband, claiming that he was “falsely implicated” in the scandal.

“My husband is innocent, I stand by him. Rape charges against my husband are wrong,” Ritu Kumar told a news channel here.

The embattled ex-minister’s wife said that the charges were part of a “political conspiracy against her innocent husband” and that her entire family was with Sandeep at this hour.

The former minister was arrested on Saturday night after a woman approached Sultanpuri police station in north Delhi with a complaint of sexual harassment against the former Social Welfare and Women and Child Development Minister following which a case was filed.

He was booked under sections 376 (punishment for rape) and 328 (causing hurt by means of poison, with intent to commit an offence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

He was also charged under the Information Technology Act’s section 67A (punishment for publishing or transmitting of material containing sexually explicit act in electronic form).

The woman had alleged in her complaint that she was sexually harassed by Kumar at his office-cum-residence in Sultanpuri area where she had gone to get her ration card made.

She had also alleged that Kumar had offered her a spiked cold drink following which she could not recall what exactly happened with her and how she had acted.

A Delhi Police team on Sunday visited the same house where the woman had alleged of being raped.

Kumar was sacked on Wednesday after an alleged “sex video” involving him became viral. On Thursday, he defended himself, saying he had resigned on his own and alleged that he had been targeted because he was a Dalit. — IANS/ PTI