AN FIR on charges of rape has been registered against Swami Pradiptananda, also known as Kartik Maharaj, a monk associated with the Bharat Sevashram Sangha’s Beldanga unit in Murshidabad, police said on Friday.
The move comes after a woman filed a police complaint against Maharaj on Thursday, nearly 12 years after the alleged incidents began. Maharaj has denied all the allegations, terming them as “baseless”.
According to the FIR, the complainant claimed that in 2012, she met Maharaj, who offered her a teaching job. She accepted the job and was allotted a room on the fifth floor of the school premises. She alleged that Maharaj would frequently summon her to his office and eventually sexually assaulted her on multiple occasions.
She alleged that on June 13 this year two persons, claiming to be associates of Maharaj, assaulted her and forcibly abandoned her near a correctional home after warning her that she should cut off all contact with Maharaj. In her complaint, she expressed concern that other women also may have faced similar ordeals.
A probe is on, police said.
