Unnao rape case: Sengar convicted; faces life sentence
NEW DELHI: Bangermau MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar has been convicted in the 2017 Unnao rape case by the Tis Hazari court in Delhi on Monday.
He broke down in court when he learnt that he will be facing the possibility of a life sentence as the trial in the Unnao rape case concluded in his conviction with Principal Sessions judge Dharmesh Sharma finding the EX-BJP member guilty and convicting him on counts of rape and committing penetrative sexual assault on a child while being a public servant.
The Delhi court, which has been hearing the Unnao cases since the Supreme Court of India transferred them to the Capital while convicting Sengar under Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code read with Sections 5(c) and 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, gave the benefit of doubt to co-accused
Shashi Singh, acquitting her of all charges.
The court added that arguments on the quantum of punishment would be held on Wednesday. The maximum sentence for Sengar’s offences, in this case, is life imprisonment.
The court observed that the CBI had failed to prove Singh’s role as a co-conspirator and that “it appears
Shashi Singh herself is a victim of circumstances.” The CBI, in its chargesheet, had accused Singh of luring the then-teenaged Unnao rape victim to Sengar’s home in Unnao under the pretext of arranging a meeting with the local MLA (Sengar), who then dragged the victim into his room and raped her.
Judge Sharma also made it clear beyond a reasonable doubt from the examination of six prosecution witness statements, including those of the rape victim and her mother, that the victim was, in fact, a minor when Sengar had raped her, decimating the defense’s argument that the victim was of age at the time of the alleged crime. The judge went on to say that the victim’s statement has been “unblemished, truthful and has been proved to be of ‘sterling quality’ to arrive at a conclusion that she was sexually assaulted by accused Kuldeep Singh Sengar”.
The court also took a stern position against the method of the probe in the case by investigative authorities, noting that the matter was not probed by a woman officer as mandated by the POCSO Act. The court also pulled up the CBI for delaying the filing of a charge-sheet in the gang-rape case by over a year despite having finished the investigation by end of July 2018.
Sengar has been convicted twoand-half-years after the rape took place in June 2017, following which the case gathered prominence only when the victim tried to immolate herself outside UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s residence in 2017. Since then all cases pertaining to the matter were transferred to the CBI and the agency has taken up the investigation in five separate cases involving the Unnao rape victim, one of which has now ended in Sengar’s conviction.