New Delhi: Delhi district court on Friday sentenced life imprisonment, to expelled BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar, convicted for kidnapping and raping a woman in Unnao in 2017. District Judge Dharmesh Sharma announced the quantum of sentence.
Kuldeep Sengar has been ordered to deposit Rs 25 lakh within a month; Rs 10 lakh of which will be paid as compensation to the rape survivor. Failure to deposit the amount, the court warned, will lead to seizure of property to ensure compensation is provided to the family.
The case was being heard on a day-to-day basis at Delhi’s Tis Hazari court since August 5 after it was transferred to Delhi from a Lucknow court on the Supreme Court’s directions.
“This court does not find any mitigating circumstance. Sengar was a public servant and betrayed people’s faith,” the judge said while declining the plea for a lenient approach in sentencing him.
Terming the Unnao case “an extraordinary one”, where the court has to “consider her continued suffering”, the CBI had sought life imprisonment, the maximum punishment for charges Sengar was convicted under.
The Unnao woman was kidnapped and raped by Sengar in 2017 when she was a minor. The rape complaint, however, was registered only after she attempted to immolate herself outside Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s official residence in Lucknow.
She took the extreme step after her father was allegedly thrashed by Sengar’s brother, Atul Sengar, taken to jail instead of hospital even though he was grievously injured and died two days later in police custody. The matter came to light after a video clip showing Atul Sengar beating the father went viral on the social media.
The co-accused Shashi Singh, who allegedly took the minor to Sengar, has been acquitted on “benefit of the doubt”.