Court frames gang-rape charges against senior IAS officer

Chandigarh: A local court here on Saturday framed gang-rape charges against Haryana's commissioner and secretary in fisheries department N K Jain in an eight-year-old rape case.

Jain, a 1978 batch Haryana-cadre Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, was Chandigarh home secretary at the time of the incident.

Charges of criminal conspiracy and putting a person in fear of accusation of offence to commit extortion were also framed against Jain in the court of additional district and sessions judge R N Bharti. The case is slated for next hearing on August 23.

According to the police, Jain was booked in August 2002 for hatching a conspiracy to frame city-based industrialist M K Jain in a rape case.

One of N K Jain's accomplice, Surinder Kumar, was booked for rape while three others - Ram Lal, Narveer and Baldev Kumar - were booked for conspiring with him.

A 21-year-old girl, resident of Shimla in Himachal Pradesh, was allegedly raped and thrown out of a car in an unconscious state in Sector 44 here on August 14, 2000.

"The victim registered a complaint with the police, alleging that she was raped by M K Jain, resident of Sector 8 in Chandigarh, after being given some intoxicants in a cold drink," Subash Sagar, who was the investigation officer in the case and is currently doing law practice, told IANS.

"However, during our investigation, we found that M K Jain was innocent and he was falsely implicated in the case by N K Jain and four other accused," he said.

"Now we have provisions in our law that anyone conspiring in rape cases is liable to be slapped with charges of gangrape," he added.

The Chandigarh Police filed a chargesheet against the five accused in January 2003 but the charges could not be framed in the court because a number of writ applications were filed in the Punjab and Haryana High Court by the accused, seeking quashing of the case.