Unnao BJP MLA booked for rape
LUCKNOW/ALLAHABAD: Uttar Pradesh police lodged a first information report (FIR) on Thursday against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislator Kuldeep Singh Sengar for rape, criminal intimidation and abduction of a teenaged girl whose father died this week after an alleged assault by Sengar’s brother.
The state government handed over the investigation of the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation as the Allahabad high court questioned the Uttar Pradesh government’s handling of the Unnao rape case, asking why Sengar hadn’t been arrested even after the FIR had been lodged.
The CBI will start a probe into the rape of the woman and the death of her father on Friday. In a notification, the Department of Personnel and Training said three cases registered at Makhi police station in Unnao will be investigated by CBI. People familiar with the development said a CBI team is likely to visit Unnao on Friday to take up the probe.
A Special Investigation Team constituted by the state govern- ment ,in a report submitted to chief minister Yogi Adityanath, had recommended the registration of an FIR against Sengar in the rape case and handing over of the investigation to the CBI.
“The UP government has handed the probe over to the CBI. No accused will be spared,” PTI quoted Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya as saying.
In the FIR lodged at Makhi police station in Unnao, the stringent Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, was also cited against the MLA. The girl’s date of birth, according to the FIR, is August 17, 2002, on the basis of which she is younger than 16. Previous reports have put her age at 18. The police complaint was lodged on the basis of the report submitted to the government by a SIT led by additional director general of police, Lucknow zone, Rajeev Krishna, on Wednesday night.