Bijnor: A 36-year-old woman who had filed a complaint in court against a local BJP leader for attempting to rape her was found dead under mysterious circumstances on Tuesday. The woman, living alone with her five kids after her husband moved to Delhi last year for work, had told police she was being constantly harassed. After seeing the police’s reluctance to take action in the matter, she had later approached the chief judicial magistrate’s court for intervention. The first hearing was to come up next week.

The woman, a Dalit, suddenly went missing on Monday. On Tuesday morning, her body was found 250 metres away from the village in a sugarcane field. There were strangulation marks on her neck.

According to former village head Guru Sevak, she had written to several district officials after police failed to register her complaint of the alleged rape attempt by Badarpur (rural) BJP president Vijay Singh.

When contacted, Singh said, “Guru Sevek wanted to grab a piece of land belonging to a poor man. When I opposed him, he used the woman to trap me in a fake case. She used to live with him. I have nothing to do with this case.”

However, in a complaint also given to administrative officials on ‘tehsil divas’ on September 1, the victim had written: “When BJP came to power in UP, I approached Vijay Singh for construction of my house under a government scheme. He assured help and took me to a senior leader’s house on June 26. On our way back, Singh along with one of his companions started molesting me. I somehow escaped. When I approached cops later, they refused to register an FIR.”

Tehsil divas is a specific day every month when senior administrative officials gather to take complaints from local residents on a variety of issues.

Badarpur station house officer Raj Kumar Sharma said, “We are questioning both Guru Sevak and Vijay Singh.” On Tuesday evening, police also filed a case against Sevak. “Police have filed a case against him based on the complaint of one Shaunath Singh, who alleged that just before her death Sevek had telephoned the woman.”