The police on Friday sent to prosecutors the case of a former lawmaker who made headlines earlier this year for verbal abuse, on suspicion of assaulting and injuring her former secretary.
Former House of Representatives member Mayuko Toyota, 43, left the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in the wake of the abuse scandal and lost her Diet seat in Sunday's general election after running as an independent.
She drew attention after the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho claimed that Toyota, who was sitting in the back seat of a car driven by her then secretary, a man in his 50s, yelled at and struck him several times on the head and face last May.
Shukan Shincho uploaded an audio file of the incident, claimed to have been recorded by the secretary, in which a woman can be heard hurling insults such as "baldy" and "You should die."
At a news conference in September, Toyota apologized for verbally abusing the secretary but denied assaulting him, saying, "I have never inflicted serious injury on him by being violent."
Toyota worked at the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry before entering the Lower House lawmaker in December 2012. In Sunday's snap election, she ran for the No. 4 single-seat constituency in Saitama Prefecture, seeking a third term.
