Bengal: Padma awardee monk moves Calcutta HC seeking FIR quashing in rape case

Jul 01, 2025 06:30 PM IST

Kolkata: The Calcutta high court on Tuesday accepted a petition from 2025 Padma Shri awardee Swami Pradiptananda, head of the Bharat Sevashram Sangha’s Beldanga ashram in Murshidabad district, seeking quashing of the first information report (FIR) police filed last week after a local woman accused him of rape.

Lawyers aware of the development said the monk’s counsels filed the petition before the single bench of justice Jay Sengupta. The bench is likely to hold a hearing on Wednesday.

Murshidabad’s Lalbagh police station, which registered the case on June 26, sent a summon notice to the monk, popularly known as Kartik Maharaj, on Monday, asking him to appear by 10 am on Tuesday for questioning. The monk, who was in Kolkata, skipped the summon.

“Kartik Maharaj moved the high court on Tuesday afternoon,” one of his aides told HT, requesting anonymity. The monk did not make any comment and avoided the media.

The complainant alleged that Swami Pradiptananda had raped her repeatedly between 2012 and 2019 by promising her a job. In the complaint letter, a copy of which was seen by HT, she said she was forced to undergo an abortion in 2013. She also claimed to have talked to Swami Pradiptananda over the phone on June 12 and alleged that two men sent by him threatened her the following day.

The monk has shared dais with Bharatiya Janata Party’s Bengal leaders such as Suvendu Adhikari several times in recent months. In May 2024, chief minister Mamata Banerjee publicly accused him of helping the BJP in the then ongoing Lok Sabha polls. The monk sent a legal notice to Banerjee, demanding an unconditional apology, but she stuck to her allegations.

The ruling Trinamool Congress unleashed a fresh attack on the monk after he moved the high court.

The party circulated a video of a 2014 event in which the monk purportedly said Hindu women are raped because they cross the Lakshaman Rekha, something Muslim women never do. HT could not independently verify the authenticity of the video.

TMC also ciruclated videos of local women of Nabagram, protesting the alleged rape and demanding punishment for the monk at an agitation on Tuesday.

Bengal BJP president Sukanta Majumdar and his party colleagues alleged that the TMC was trying to frame the monk with trumped up charges.

“The veracity of the allegation should be investigated first. Why wasn’t any complaint lodged in all these years?” Majumdar said on Monday.

Police served the summon notice on Monday amid rising protests in Bengal over the alleged June 25 gangrape of a 24-year-old student inside the South Calcutta Law College by one former and two current students, who have been arrested after the incident. The accused were found to be active workers of the students’ wing of the ruling party.

The BJP has made this a political issue in the run-up to the 2026 assembly polls.

Dissociating itself from the accused in the gangrape case, TMC has targeted Swami Pradiptananda to counter the BJP.