Lucknow: The DNA test report of the aborted foetus in the Ayodhya gangrape case — in which 71-year-old Samajwadi Party leader Moid Khan and Raju Khan, a domestic worker employed by him, were named as accused — has matched with the latter and not the former.
This revelation was made in a submission by the Ayodhya Police in the Allahabad High Court (HC) Monday.
The court was hearing a bail petition moved by Moid Khan, who had approached the HC after he was denied bail in the case by a lower court in Ayodhya.
Moid Khan’s family has said the report supports their assertion of his innocence, and that they hope the HC will now grant him bail.
Speaking to ThePrint, additional government counsel in the POCSO court Vinod Upadhayaya said Moid Khan’s bail had been cancelled by the lower court, after which he approached the HC for bail.
“The high court had summoned the DNA report of the aborted foetus of the gangrape victim. The report states that the DNA sample matches with Raju and not Moid,” he added.
On 29 July, Ayodhya district’s Purakalandar police had booked Moid Khan and Raju Khan for the alleged gangrape of a 12-year-old girl who lived around 500 meters from Moid Khan’s now-demolished bakery.
The minor’s mother had alleged that around two and half months back, her daughter had gone to work in a field near her house when Raju took her to Moid’s bakery claiming the latter had been calling her there for work.
In the FIR, lodged on a complaint filed by the victim’s mother — which ThePrint has seen — she had alleged that when her daughter reached the bakery, she was first raped by Moid Khan, while Raju filmed the act, after which Raju too raped her and threatened her not to tell anyone.
“Raju threatened her saying he would kill her if she revealed the incident to anyone and that they would circulate the video…Later, he kept blackmailing her by threatening her about the video. Fearing disgrace, she did not reveal about the incident to anyone but when she fell sick, we took her to a doctor and found that she is two-months pregnant,” reads the FIR lodged against Moid Khan and Raju under under sections 376DA (punishment for gang rape on woman under sixteen years of age), 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC as well as sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
While both were arrested for the alleged gangrape on 30 July, the Ayodhya administration had bulldozed Moid Khan’s bakery days later, on grounds that it was “illegally built over a pond”.
A charge sheet was filed against the duo by the Ayodhya police in the court of additional district and sessions judge Nirupama Vikram Singh on 26 September.
‘He was framed for political reasons’
Speaking to ThePrint, Moid Khan’s cousin Aftab Khan said the DNA report buttresses their statement that he was being framed for political reasons.
“We had been saying since the beginning that my brother is innocent. The DNA report has only confirmed what we had been saying already. He was framed for political reasons. The BJP lost the election to the Bhadarsa Nagar panchayat and the Ayodhya Lok Sabha which is why he was framed. My brother’s image is good and he has been popular among the public and gets all the work done. We hope that the high court will give him bail. He has been in jail for two months now,” Aftab said.
Additional government counsel Vinod Upadhayaya however said that in the FIR, the victim’s mother has alleged that she was raped on various occasions by Raju and Moid.
“Since she has alleged that she was raped regularly, the victim’s statement in the court will hold value. He was denied bail by the lower court to avoid any possibility of him pressuring the victim,” he added.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)