Janata Dal (United) leader Ajay Alok falsely claimed on Twitter that 40 out of 62 members of the Aam Aadmi Party in the newly elected Delhi Legislative Assembly have been accused of rape.
BOOM accessed the report by Association for Democratic Reforms to find that only one AAP MLA has declared a rape case against him - Mohinder Goyal from the Rithala constituency. Furthermore, 6 AAP MLAs and 1 Bharatiya Janata party MLA have also declared cases of assault on woman with intent to outrage her modesty (IPC Section-354).
Alok made this claim in a tweet which read (translated from Hindi):
"40 out of 62 MLAs are rape accused, with their support Arvind Kejriwal becomes Chief Minister, truly new type of politics have begun, people calling Delhi the rape capital have left even RJD (Rashtiriya Janata Dal) behind (sic), Lalu Prasad Yadav will be happy that at least someone is getting ahead, do you understand why Nirbhaya scandals happen people?"
Click here to view an archived version of the tweet.
Fact Check
To fact check this, BOOM accessed the latest report by ADR, which compiles all the declared criminal cases in the affidavits filed by all candidates prior to polling.
It mentions that out of the 70 MLAs, 37 of them (which includes AAP and BJP MLAs) have declared serious criminal cases against them - which is lesser than the number claimed by Alok.
ADR defines the following offences as "serious":
- Offence for which maximum punishment is of 5 years or more.
- If an offence is non-bailable
- If it is an electoral offence (for eg. IPC 171E or bribery)
- Offence related to loss to exchequer
- Offences that are assault, murder, kidnap, rape related
- Offences that are mentioned in Representation of the People Act (Section 8)
- Offences under Prevention of Corruption Act
- Crimes against women.
Crimes against women are further divided into rape (IPC Section-376) or "assault or criminal force on woman with intent to outrage her modesty" (IPC Section-354).
Upon searching for declared cases of rape, BOOM found that only one MLA had declared a case against himself - AAP's Mohinder Goyal from the Rithala constituency.
Furthermore, there were 7 MLAs who had declared cases of assault on women with intent to outrage her modesty by force - 6 from AAP and 1 from BJP.
Therefore, overall there were 7 MLAs from AAP who have declared serious cases of crime against women, and 1 MLA from BJP who had declared the same.