India’s Supreme Court has put on hold a controversial order that had suspended the life sentence of a former lawmaker convicted of raping a teenager.
Kuldeep Singh Sengar, formerly of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was found guilty in 2019 under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act.
But last week, the Delhi high court suspended his sentence and granted him conditional bail – although Sengar remained in jail in a separate case related to the death of the survivor’s father.
The high court order sparked outrage and protests, including from the survivor and her mother.
The crime against the 17-year-old in Uttar Pradesh state’s Unnao district was one of the most horrific in India in recent years.
The survivor, who can’t be named under Indian laws, alleged that she had approached Sengar for a job in June 2017 and was kidnapped and raped for more than a week by him and others.
Her ordeal first came to national attention in 2018 – a year after the assault – when she tried to set herself on fire, alleging police inaction.
At the time, Sengar was an influential politician from the BJP, which was in power in the state as well as at the national level. The party later expelled him.
Months before Sengar’s conviction in December 2019, the woman survived a suspicious car crash that killed two of her aunts and seriously injured her lawyer.
The family also accused Sengar and his men of assaulting the woman’s father in April 2018. Police charged five men over the attack but also arrested her father for illegal firearms possession. He later died in prison.
In March 2020, Sengar was found guilty of culpable homicide and given a 10-year-jail sentence.
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