A Delhi court on Wednesday summoned Bharatiya Janata Party leader Shahnawaz Hussain in connection with an alleged rape case, Bar and Bench reported.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Vaibhav Mehta ordered him to appear before the court on October 20.

The complainant alleged that in April 2018, Hussain took her to a farmhouse and raped her after lacing her cold drink with a sedative. A magistrate ordered the police to file a first information report, after which the former Union minister challenged the order in the Delhi High Court.

In August 2022, the High Court dismissed Hussain’s petition and noted that the police seemed reluctant to file the FIR.

On Wednesday, the additional chief metropolitan magistrate dismissed a police report seeking the cancellation of the FIR, saying that the trustworthiness of the woman’s claims could be tested during the trial, according to PTI.

The court remarked that the woman gave consistent statements before the police and a magistrate. It also said that minor contradictions in her statements could not become grounds to disbelieve her version in its entirety.

“Here is a woman before the court, who is stating before the police and before the court, repeatedly, that she has been raped by being intoxicated; unless IO [investigating officer] brings such material on record to establish that there is no possibility that she could have been raped, this court has no reason to throw out her case at the outset,” the judge said.