Patna: The ruling Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) on Sunday expelled party lawmaker Raj Ballabh Yadav from the party for six years after he was accused of raping a minor girl at his bungalow last week along with his security personnel. The RJD, headed by Lalu Prasad Yadav, is a coalition partner in the Grand Alliance government in Bihar, which is headed by chief minister Nitish Kumar.

“The accused lawmaker has been suspended from the party with immediate effect. The decision has been taken to ensure nobody damages the party’s reputation in future,” state RJD chief Ramchandra Purve told the media on Sunday.

Party spokesperson Manoj Jha said his party would not tolerate such conduct by a lawmaker. “That goes in line with what we have committed to Bihar and we have shown with our work,” said Jha.

The development comes a day after the police ordered the arrest of the accused lawmaker and charged him with raping a minor girl, in what has come as another major embarrassment to the state government. The police issued the arrest order shortly after the victim identified the accused in a picture line-up.

“Yes sir, this is the man who robbed my modesty the whole night … this is the culprit,” the victim said when shown photographs of some suspects by the police. According to the victim, the accused also tried to force her to drink alcohol before raping her.

“He [the accused] didn’t show any mercy towards me when asked [she] is of the age of his granddaughter and also threatened [to] get me gang-raped by his security guards if I did not agree to his wishes,” the victim reportedly told the police.

According to the victim, a middle-aged woman lured her on the pretext of attending a birthday party in the locality on February 6 and handed her to a man whom everybody was addressing as “netaji” (leader). The woman quietly left the scene subsequently and said she would return soon. The victim hails from Kumar’s home district: Nalanda.

“He raped me the whole night while making me see a porn movie. He also made an MMS of the whole act and threatened to make it public if I dared to reveal it to anybody,” the victim, a grade 10 student, reportedly told the police.

She said the thought something was suspicious when the woman who lured her to the house tried to leave and was caught by security guards and locked in a room.

Soon after the incident, the victim reported the matter to her parents, who then registered a case with the police. It was during investigation that the police showed her some photographs of the suspects and she identified the accused. The police are conducting raids to arrest the lawmaker.

Last month, ruling Janata Dal-United (JD-U) lawmaker Sarfaraz Alam was arrested by the police on charges of molesting a Delhi-based couple in a premier train. He was also suspended from the party for his misconduct.