New Delhi, December 16
A Delhi court on Monday convicted expelled BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar of abduction and rape of a woman in Unnao in 2017.
District Judge Dharmesh Sharma, however, acquitted co-accused Shashi Singh of all charges.
The Delhi court will hear arguments on the quantum on sentence for Sengar on Wednesday.
Sengar has been convicted of rape under the IPC and POCSO Act for offence of a public servant committing penetrative sexual assault on a child.
The woman was allegedly abducted and raped by Sengar in 2017 when she was a minor. Sengar, a four-time BJP MLA from UP’s Bangermau, was expelled from the BJP in August 2019.
The court had on August 9 framed charges against the MLA and Singh under Sections 120 B (criminal conspiracy), 363 (kidnapping), 366 (kidnapping or inducing a woman to compel for marriage), 376 (rape) of the IPC and relevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.
The judge heard the case on a day-to-day basis from August 5 after it was transferred to Delhi from a court in Lucknow on the Supreme Court’s directions.
On July 28 this year, the car of the survivor was hit by a truck and she was severely injured. The woman’s two aunts were killed in the accident and her family had alleged foul play.
Her father was allegedly framed in an illegal arms case and arrested on April 3, 2018. He died while in judicial custody a few days later, on April 9. The local court here has framed murder and other charges against the MLA, his brother Atul and nine others in the case.
The apex court, taking cognisance of the rape survivor’s letter written to the Chief Justice of India, had on August 1 transferred all five cases registered in connection with the Unnao rape incident from a Lucknow court to the court in Delhi with directions to hold trial on daily basis and completing it within 45 days.
The trial in the other four cases–framing of the rape survivor’s father in illegal firearms case and his death in judicial custody, conspiracy of Sengar with others in the accident case and a separate case of gangrape of the rape survivor by three others–are going on in the court.
During the trial in the rape case which was held in camera, 13 prosecution witnesses and nine defence witnesses were examined. The mother of the rape survivor and her uncle were the main witnesses in the case.
A special court was also held at AIIMS hospital here to record the statement of the rape survivor, who was admitted there after she was airlifted from a hospital in Lucknow.
The woman and her family were provided CRPF security as per the apex court’s orders. They have now been shifted to a rented accommodation in the national capital with the assistance of the Delhi Commission for Women. PTI
