New Delhi: In a dramatic turn of events, the Uttar Pradesh Police arrested Congress MP Rakesh Rathore in connection with a rape case in the middle of a press conference at home on Thursday.
Surprisingly, political rivals were conspicuously silent on the Sitapur MP’s arrest, sparking speculation that the lack of outcry could be linked to Rathore’s political affiliations with almost all major parties in Uttar Pradesh over the years.
The alleged rape dates back to the period when he was a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA between 2017 and 2022.
Rathore’s arrest came a day after the Allahabad High Court rejected his petition for anticipatory bail.
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The 35-year-old woman alleged in an FIR filed on 15 January that her association with the MP began in 2018 when he promised to help her build a political career under his patronage.
She claimed he used his position to gain her trust by giving her a position in his OBC association Tailik Mahasangh’s district unit. The OBC leader runs the Tailik Mahasangh, which he founded in the late 1990s to raise the issues of his community.
However, in March 2020, Rathore allegedly confined her in his house and raped her. He later promised marriage and political advancement to silence her while continuing the assault.
Over the years, Rathore has been associated with all four major parties in Uttar Pradesh–the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the BJP, the Congress and the Samajwadi Party (SP). He started his political career with the BSP when he unsuccessfully contested the 2012 Uttar Pradesh polls from Sitapur. He left the BSP before the 2017 polls to join the BJP where he won the polls from the same seat.
According to an Uttar Pradesh BJP functionary, Rathore was seen as a key asset for the party at the time.
“In 2017, we were looking for non-Yadav OBC leaders who had at least 10-15,000 votes of their own,” the BJP functionary told ThePrint. “Rathore was the right choice at that time as he was running an OBC outfit in Sitapur which has influence within the community in the state, particularly among the Telis (an OBC caste). Telis are over 7 percent in the Sitapur belt. So for us, he was an asset those days.”
He added that Rathore’s ties with the BJP, however, soured in 2020 when he questioned the Yogi government’s “mismanagement” of the Covid pandemic. “Then one alleged audio tape went viral where he was taking a dig at the PM’s ‘Thaali Bajao-Taali Bajao’ appeal to motivate Covid warriors.”
The BJP functionary added that another alleged audio in which Rathore directly questioned the functioning of the state government and purportedly spoke against the Brahmins drove a wedge between him and the party.
According to him, Rathore said, while speaking to a party leader, “Dalits and backward classes all voted but the rule is of Brahmins. The BJP wants to establish the rule of Brahmins.”
By 2022, it was clear that the party would not give him a ticket for the Assembly polls. Rathore then shifted to the SP before the election, hopeful of getting a ticket. But the SP fielded an old loyalist and another OBC leader, Radheyshyam Jaiswal, from Sitapur.
Later, Rathore hoped to secure tickets for his loyalists in the 2023 local body elections, but once again, he was met with disappointment.
Sources within the SP suggest that the local leadership was not in favour of his joining, citing his focus on personal politics rather than party unity. Eventually, the party’s top leadership heard the local leadership’s concerns and denied him a ticket.
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SP denied ticket, joined Congress without any deal
After being rejected by the top three parties in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress became the last option for Rathore. In June 2023, he joined the Congress party along with his supporters in the hope of contesting the 2027 assembly polls.
“We were aware that Rathore was unhappy in the SP after the local body polls. So we approached him and he was ready to join without any condition. He was focussing on bringing more local OBCs to the party in UP,” a functionary in the UP Congress told ThePrint.
The Congress functionary added that despite his desire to focus on the state polls, Rathore unexpectedly filed his nomination for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, following pressure from the party leadership after two probable candidates withdrew from the fray.
“During the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, no one expected we could win the Sitapur seat. Our top leadership didn’t even do a roadshow on that side as we were not sure of winning that seat. But in the INDIA bloc wave in Uttar Pradesh, we won that seat by a decent margin,” the Congress functionary said.
“I remember in our war room at the UPCC, a senior leader on the day of the result said, ‘’Jab Rathore jeet raha hai to samajh kitna wave tha jo hum samajh ni paae (Imagine Rathore is winning so there is a wave of India bloc which we did not understand.”
The functionary also added that before this case emerged, the Congress leadership was considering giving Rathore an important role in the state as he is a non-Yadav OBC leader. However, that looks uncertain though the party is hopeful he might get relief from the Supreme Court.
A senior UP Congress said the BJP was quiet on the issue because Rathore was a BJP MLA at the time of the alleged assault in 2020. The FIR also mentions that the woman met him in 2018 when he was still with the BJP.
Similarly, the BSP, which first gave Rathore a ticket, has also remained silent.
Absconding after FIR, arrested at his house
After receiving an FIR on 15 January, the Sitapur police registered the first information report against Rathore on 17 January under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) related to rape, criminal intimidation and threatening with a firearm.
Rathore had been allegedly absconding since the registration of the FIR. His organisation, the Tailik Mahasangh, submitted a memorandum to several district magistrates protesting the case against him.The memorandum alleged the case was filed with the consent of the police administration just to tarnish the Sitapur MP’s image.
Rathore subsequently moved the Allahabad High Court seeking anticipatory bail. In court, Rathore’s lawyer said that the case, filed after four years, was politically motivated and he was being falsely implicated.
But the court rejected his plea. A Sitapur district police official said that “when police officials got to know that Rathore was present at his residence on Thursday, we arrested him as he was absconding for the last two weeks”.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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