Chandigarh: A court in Punjab’s Mohali district on Tuesday sentenced self-styled pastor Bajinder Singh - popular for his viral "Yeshu, Yeshu’’ videos on social media - to life imprisonment in a 2018 rape case.
While Bajinder was pronounced guilty on March 28 under sections 376 (rape), 323 (punishment for voluntary causing hurt) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of IPC, the court of additional district and session judge Vikrant Kumar pronounced the verdict on Tuesday.
Five other accused, including pastor Jatinder, pastor Akbar, Sattar Ali and Sandeep Pehalwan, were acquitted in the case.
The victim who accused Bajinder of rape under the pretext of helping her settling abroad, lured her to his residence in Mohali and raped her in 2018. She held that Bajinder also recorded the act and demanded a huge sum of money from her, failing which he threatened he would make the obscene videos public. She lodged her complaint in Zirakpur police station.
However, though Bajinder was arrested at Delhi airport in 2018, he was released on bail. The complainant had earlier also held that she was being pressured to withdraw her complaint.
He also face another case of sexual harassment involving a 22-year woman follower and a case for allegedly assaulting a woman in February, this year.
Bajinder was presented before the court amid tight security arrangements at the Mohali court complex.
Bajinder, who claimed to miraculously heal people, was arrested on March 28, last when he was held guilty by the court and taken to Patiala jail. A group of supporters of the self-styled pastor also held a protest against his arrest claiming that the woman had filed a false complaint against him.
Bajinder runs two churches in Jalandhar and one in Mohali, has a huge following, popularity on social media and draws big gatherings where he claims to heal people suffering from serious ailments.
According to information, born into a Jat family in Haryana, Bajinder Singh converted to Christianity when he was in jail in a murder case in early 2000s.
