Lucknow, Sep 4 (IANS): The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has granted interim bail to former Samajwadi Party minister Gayatri Prajapati for a period of two months.

He has been asked to furnish a personal bond of Rs 5 lakh and two sureties.

The court has said that Prajapati will not move out of the country during this period.

Prajapati was arrested from Lucknow in March 2017 on charges of rape and has spent the past three and a half years in jail though he was also in a Lucknow hospital for some months.

Prajapati was arrested when a 35-year-old woman had accused him of raping her when she met him for a job. The former minister allegedly molested her minor daughter too.

He was also accused of taking obscene photos of the victim and threatening her to make the pictures public and raping her for the past two years.

However, Prajapati claimed it to be a conspiracy of the BJP in order to distract people's attention from the Assembly polls.

Prajapati, who was considered a favourite of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, had won the last Assembly poll from Amethi constituency and was inducted in the state cabinet as mining minister later. He enjoyed immense political clout during the SP government.