Expelled BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar was on Monday held guilty by a Delhi court for kidnapping and rape of a minor girl in Uttar Pradesh's Unnao district in 2017 on the basis of “unblemished and truthful” version of the victim.
The court said the investigation in the instant by the CBI has not been fair with regard to the victim and her family.
“The instant case manifests the multitudes of restrictions and taboos within which many women in the rural areas are brought up...It epitomizes the fear ingrained in the mind of young girl in the countryside and elsewhere against the reporting the issues of sexual assault by powerful adults,” it said.
The case has come as a major embarrassment for the BJP after the victim was left critically injured and two of her had aunts died in a suspicious road accident at Rae Bareli in July. The trial was shifted to Delhi on order by the Supreme Court.
On Monday, District judge Dharmesh Sharma convicted Singh of various offences under the Indian Penal Code and the POSCO Act. He, however, acquitted co-accused Shashi Singh of all charges.
The court fixed December 19 as the date of hearing arguments on quantum of sentence.
Soon after the pronouncement of judgement, Singh broke down in the courtroom.
The offences entail a maximum punishment of life imprisonment.
In its judgement, the court pulled up the CBI for the delay in filing the charge sheet after completing the investigation.
“The CBI has not explained the fact that when the investigation in the alleged kidnapping, illegal confinement and gang rape of the victim had been taken over by them on April 13, 2018, and entire investigation was completed by July 2018, what prevented the CBI from filing the charge sheet, which was belatedly filed on October 3, 2019, after almost a year,” it said.
The court also castigated the CBI for calling the victim at its office “without bothering for the kind of harassment, anguish, and re-victimisation that occurs to a victim of sexual assault in such a case”.
The woman was allegedly kidnapped and raped by Sengar in 2017 when she was a minor.
Sengar, a four-time MLA from UP's Bangermau, was expelled from the party 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 other sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
The trial in the case was held in-camera in Delhi after the Supreme Court transferred the matter from Unnao to the national capital.
The top court had in August allowed a plea by the mother of the Unnao rape victim to airlift her from Lucknow to Delhi's AIIMS as she had developed pneumonia in her battle for life after being critically injured in a road accident on July 28 which claimed lives of her two aunts and left her lawyer with grievous injuries.