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Hyderabad: Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Bandi Sanjay Kumar led a massive procession through Karimnagar town on Hanuman Jayanti on the evening of Tuesday (May 12), comparing himself with Hanuman from the epic Ramayana and promising vengeance against those who “dragged his family into the streets”. Meanwhile, Telangana Police elevated the criminal charges against his son, Bandi Sai Bageerath, to aggravated sexual assault.

Charges were first registered against Bageerath under the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012 on May 8, on the complaint of a woman whose 17-year-old daughter alleges he befriended her, entered into an intimate relationship with her on the promise of marriage, and later denied the association.

The incident has kicked up a political storm in the state, setting alarm bells ringing in the chief minister’s office. Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy has sought daily personal reports into the police’s investigation and earlier set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) led by a senior woman officer Ritiraj, a Deputy Commissioner of Police, to probe the charges.

On May 12, as the probe threw up CCTV records and other details amid a thicket of allegations against the pace of the five-day-old investigation as well as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Bandi Sanjay Kumar’s party, the Pet Basheerabad police in Hyderabad added charges of aggravated penetrative sexual assault to the list of Bageerath’s alleged offences.

The police are also investigating a counter-case filed by Bageerath against the woman, her daughter (the minor survivor) and her father, in which he claims the........

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