Kolkata: Murshidabad police in West Bengal has summoned this year’s Padma Shri awardee Swami Pradiptananda for questioning in a rape case filed against him on the basis of a complaint lodged by a local woman.
Swami Pradiptananda, a Bharat Sevashram Sangha monk popularly known as Kartik Maharaj, has been asked to appear at Lalbagh police station by 10 am on Tuesday.
“Swami Pradiptananda is not here. I will go through the papers and inform him,” said Swami Anirbanananda, another monk from Bharat Sevashram Sangha’s Beldanga ashram after receiving the police notice.
Though the rape case was registered against Kartik Maharaj on June 26, he has not been questioned thus far.
Additional superintendent of police Raspreet Singh said an investigation is ongoing, and the notice issued on Monday was part of the probe.
The complainant has accused Kartik Maharaj of raping her repeatedly between 2012 and 2019 by promising her a job at a school run by Bharat Sevashram Sangha.
In the complaint letter, a copy of which was seen by Hindustan Times, the victim alleged that two women from the ashram forcibly took her to a private nursing home in 2013 to undergo an abortion.
The woman also claimed she spoke to Kartik Maharaj over the phone on June 12, and alleged that two men sent by him threatened her and asked her never to contact the monk again.
BJP says monk is being framed
Kartik Maharaj, in charge of the Beldanga ashram, is said to have close links with the BJP.
The monk has shared dais with BJP’s Bengal leaders like Suvendu Adhikari multiple times.
Bengal BJP president Sukanta Majumdar and his party colleagues have alleged that the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) was trying to frame the monk by fabricating charges.
“The veracity of the charges should be investigated first. Kartik Maharaj is being framed by TMC,” Majumdar said.
In May 2024, chief minister Mamata Banerjee accused Kartik Maharaj of helping BJP in the Lok Sabha polls. The monk sent a legal notice to Mamata demanding an unconditional apology, but the Bengal CM stuck to her allegations.
The rape case involving the monk comes at a time when the state government is facing the heat over the alleged gangrape of a 24-year-old student inside the South Calcutta Law College campus by one former and two current students, who have been arrested.
Politics over rape
Even as BJP targeted the accused for being active workers of TMC’s students wing, Trinamool questioned the saffron party over Kartik Maharaj case.
“The BJP sends fact-finding teams everywhere but it is silent on Kartik Maharaj. Why don’t they send one to Murshidabad and get the facts from the rape victim,” minister Shashi Panja said.
The BJP has alleged that executives of I-Pac, a company hired by TMC to formulate election strategies, had made the Murshidabad woman file false charges against Kartik Maharaj.
TMC on Monday circulated a video purportedly showing the victim, whose face was digitally blurred.
“I don’t know what I-Pac is. I contacted a journalist to discuss my ordeal. He advised me to seek legal help. No political party is involved in this,” the woman is heard saying in the video.
