On Wednesday, a Delhi court convicted BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar and six others of culpable homicide not amounting to murder in the death case of the Unnao rape survivor’s father who died in judicial custody on April 9, 2018.
District judge Dharmesh Sharma who passed the order was reported by the Indian Express as saying, “He was beaten in a brutal manner that led to his death.”
The survivor’s father was assaulted and framed in a case of illegal firearms possession by the MLA and his aides. He died a day after the survivor tried to set herself ablaze outside UP CM Adityanath’s residence as a protest against police inaction against the MLA whom she had accused of sexually assaulting her.
The court rapped the doctors at the district hospital, calling them “butchers” and accused them of gross negligence. “The doctors at the district hospital are butchers. There was radiology but no X-ray was conducted,” the court reportedly said.
On December 20 last year, the court sentenced Sengar to jail for “remainder of his natural biological life” for raping a woman in 2017 when she was a minor.
The court had recorded the statements of the rape survivor’s uncle, mother, sister and her father’s colleague who claimed to be an eyewitness to the incident. It examined 55 witnesses in support of the case and the defence examined nine witnesses.
The CBI had said that on April 3, 2018, the survivor’s father and one Shashi Pratap Singh had an altercation. In the chargesheet, it was mentioned that the survivor’s father and his colleague were returning to their village Makhi, when they asked Singh for a lift. Singh’s refusal led to an altercation, post which he called his associates who along with Kuldeep Singh Sengar’s brother, Atul Singh Sengar reached the site and beat up the survivor’s father and his co-worker.
Post this, the survivor’s father was taken to the police station where an FIR was registered against him and he was arrested. The chargesheet also mentioned that all through this, Kuldeep Sengar was in contact with the district police superintendent and the Makhi police station in-charge Ashok Singh Bhadauria and he had also spoken to the doctor who had examined the survivor’s father.
The survivor’s father had named Atul Sengar as his attacker during the routine medical-check up before he was sent to the lock up, reported NDTV. He was taken to the hospital hours before his death, when he complained of stomach pain. Though at the time, his face bore visible signs of bruises and lacerations, the doctors decided that he was well enough to stay in jail.
“Atul Singh, the brother of the lawmaker thrashed me. He kept on beating me. Nobody tried to save me,” he was heard saying in a video that surfaced months later. “Police waale (police men — perhaps the security personnel of the lawmaker) were standing there. They did nothing,” says the man, bruises plainly visible on his face and chest.
Later, charges were framed against Kuldeep Sengar, Atul Sengar, Ashok Singh Bhadauria, sub-inspector Kamta Prasad, Constable Amir Khan and six others. In January, Prashant Upadhyaya, the doctor who treated the survivor’s father passed away under mysterious circumstances.
When in August last year, the court had charged Kuldeep and Atul Sengar for the survivor’s father’s murder, it had said that the act was a “part of a larger conspiracy to deter, silence and prevent the father from pursuing the complaint” in the rape case. It had also commended the CBI for doing a good job in the investigation.
In July 2019, a truck had rammed into the car that the rape survivor was traveling in, with her family members and her lawyer. Two of her aunts died in the accident while she was airlifted from a hospital in Lucknow and brought to AIIMS for treatment. She is currently in Delhi and is under the protection of the CRPF.
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Unnao rape case: Kuldeep Singh Sengar convicted
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