Unnao rape case: Court rejects former BJP leader’s petition

The Delhi High Court on Friday refused to stay the 10-year jail sentence imposed on expelled Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kuldeep Singh Sengar over the custodial death of the Unnao rape victim’s father.

The court rejected Sengar’s request to suspend his sentence pending his appeal against the conviction.

“This Court is not inclined to grant the present application for stay of sentence at this stage. Accordingly, the present application is dismissed,” the Supreme Court said.

Sengar requested that his sentence be suspended on the grounds that he had already served nearly six years of it and that the prosecution’s charges against him were based solely on circumstantial evidence.

“Although the appellant (Sengar) here has served more than half of the sentence imposed on him, that is, about six years of the ten years imprisonment awarded to him, this Court is also conscious of the fact that the length of a convict’s imprisonment is only one of several factors that must be taken into account in deciding an application for suspension of sentence,” the court said.

It goes on to say: “Other factors such as the seriousness of the offence, the nature of the crime, the criminal history of the convict, the impact on public confidence in the court, etc. must also be considered and kept in mind by the courts.”

The court stated that once an accused is found guilty, the presumption of innocence ceases and his application for suspension of sentence must be examined on the basis of a prima facie assessment of his role, the seriousness of the offence, etc., and the time he spent in prison is only one of those various factors.

The court noted that Sengar had already been convicted of raping the deceased man’s minor daughter and had been sentenced to life imprisonment in that case.

On March 13, 2020, the court sentenced Sengar to 10 years in prison and a fine of Rs 1 million for the death of the rape victim’s father in custody. The court had said that there could be “no leniency” for killing the “sole breadwinner” of a family.

The girl’s father was arrested under the Arms Act at Sengar’s behest and died in custody on April 9, 2018 due to police brutality.

Sengar’s appeal against the trial court’s verdict in the main Unnao rape case is already pending in the Supreme Court. He has sought quashing of the trial court’s December 16, 2019, verdict that convicted him in the rape case. Sengar has also sought quashing of the December 20, 2019, verdict that sentenced him to life imprisonment.

The girl was kidnapped and raped by Sengar as a minor in 2017.