Accused of raping a 17-year-old tribal girl from Banda, ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MLA Purshottam Naresh Dwivedi Thursday got his wife Asha Dwivedi to come to his rescue. Short of terming him as "impotent", she said everything to claim he was "innocent." "My husband is 50 years old with acute diabetes and is not capable of committing rape," Asha told a press conference here on Thursday.
"He is innocent and has been falsely implicated in the rape case," she claimed. Asked how could she make such claim, she shot back: "After all I am his wife so who could speak more affirmatively on this issue." Giving reasons to rule out rape of the girl, who has accused her husband of not only raping her twice but also being gang raped by his guards, Asha said: "We live in a small house, which has three closely connected bedrooms; and the room where she was alleged to have been raped was just next to the room in which my son and daughter-in-law sleep."
She labelled the victim as a girl of "loose character" and claimed that "there was a conspiracy to implicate my husband in a false case". She added, "the local police station will tell you what kind of a girl she happens to be." Asha said she would call on chief minister Mayawati to seek "a CID probe into the role of all those who were responsible for implicating my husband". Mr Dwivedi, who has been suspended from the party, was sent to jail following a preliminary CID report holding him prima facie guilty.
On Jan 4, he had claimed he was impotent and falsely implicated in the rape. He had told reporters: "I am being implicated, the charge of rape is baseless. I am not capable of committing rape as I am impotent." He declared: "I am ready to be examined by any medical expert across the country to confirm that what I am saying is absolutely true." He claimed that the charge against him was "politically motivated". Mr Dwivedi accused the girl of stealing his licensed revolver and Rs.5,000 from his house, for which she was lodged in jail in Banda, about 180 km from here.
On Jan 15, her birthday, Ms Mayawati had declared that she would expel Mr Dwivedi from the party if he was found guilty as per the final CID report. "I have reason to suspect that Mr Dwivedi even went to the extent of framing the rape victim in a false case of theft for which she was put behind bars," Ms Mayawati told a large gathering on her birthday here, shortly before ordering her release in the wake of an order of the Allahabad high court that chose to take suo motto cognisance of the case.