Allahabad High Court on Wednesday granted bail to the law student who has been charged with blackmailing former BJP minister Chinmayanand after she accused him of rape.

The 23-year-old student of a law college the saffron-robed Chinmayanand operates from his Shahjahanpur ashram in Uttar Pradesh, has spent 70 days in prison and is likely to be released on Thursday.

The woman, who was arrested on September 25, had approached the high court after the district and sessions court in Shahjahanpur had rejected her bail plea. Both the woman and Chinmayanand are in Shahjahanpur jail.

Chinmayanand, who had also been a Union minister from 1999 to 2004 but is no longer a BJP member according to the party, had filed a case against the student and three of her male friends accusing them of blackmailing him and demanding Rs 5 crore.

“The only places where we are hopeful of justice are our courts. We are confident that the criminals, howsoever powerful they are, won’t be able to cheat our courts. They will be punished and my daughter and we all will get justice soon,” said the father of the rape complainant, a second-year LLM student who was represented in court by lawyer Ravi Kiran Jain.

“We are still receiving threats from people who want us to withdraw the case against Chinmayanand. But we have reached a stage where we don’t fear even the killers. The high court is supervising the ongoing investigation of the SIT and we are confident of getting justice,” the father added.

The special investigation team (SIT), which was constituted on the direction of the Supreme Court to probe the allegation of rape against Chinmayanand, had not accepted the woman’s accusations.

The complainant has alleged that Chinmayanand had filmed her bathing in her hostel and blackmailed her into submitting to rape for over a year. She says he threatened to kill her when she decided to resist.

Chinmayanand has, however, been charged not with rape but only with molestation, criminal intimidation and sexual exploitation through the use of his authority as law college head.

The woman has been charged with blackmailing the monk with sex videos, allegedly threatening to circulate them if he did not pay up Rs 5 crore.