The Delhi High Court has sought Kuldeep Sengar’s response to the Unnao rape survivor’s plea seeking death sentence in her father’s custodial death case. The Court will first decide whether her delayed appeal can be entertained.
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Thursday sought the response of expelled BJP leader Kuldeep Singh Sengar and other convicts on a plea filed by the Unnao rape survivor seeking enhancement of their 10-year jail sentence to death penalty in the custodial death case of her father.
A Division Bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Ravinder Dudeja issued notice to Sengar and the other accused persons on the survivor’s application seeking condonation of delay of over 1940 days in filing her appeal against the 2020 trial court judgment on conviction and sentencing.
The High Court clearly stated that the question of maintainability of the appeal would have to be decided first before proceeding further in the matter.
In her appeal, the survivor has argued that Sengar and the co-convicts should have been convicted under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for murder instead of Section 304 for culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
She has requested the High Court to modify the trial court’s decision and award death sentence to the convicts, contending that the nature of the offence warranted a stricter punishment.
Appearing for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the counsel submitted that the main contesting parties in the appeal were Sengar and the other accused, and that the agency had no objection in the matter.
The High Court also took note of a recent direction issued by the Supreme Court of India on February 9, where the top court asked the Delhi High Court to grant an out-of-turn hearing to Sengar’s appeal challenging his conviction in the custodial death case and to decide it within three months. The Supreme Court further directed that the survivor’s appeal seeking enhancement of sentence should also be decided.
Kuldeep Singh Sengar had earlier been convicted for raping the minor survivor and was sentenced on December 20, 2019 to imprisonment for the remainder of his life. The case relates to allegations that the girl was kidnapped and raped by Sengar in 2017 when she was a minor.
Subsequently, on March 13, 2020, Sengar along with his brother Jaideep Sengar alias Atul Singh was sentenced to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment and fined Rs 10 lakh in connection with the custodial death of the survivor’s father. The survivor’s father had been arrested allegedly at the behest of the accused under the Arms Act and later died in police custody on April 9, 2018 due to police brutality.
While delivering its judgment, the trial court had observed that “no leniency” could be shown for killing a family’s “sole bread earner”. However, despite these strong remarks, the court did not convict the accused for murder under Section 302 IPC.
Instead, it held them guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Section 304 IPC, noting that there was no proven intention to kill, and awarded the maximum sentence of 10 years prescribed for that offence.
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It is important to note that the entire case was transferred from Uttar Pradesh to Delhi on August 1, 2019, on the directions of the Supreme Court, considering the sensitivity and seriousness of the matter.
The present proceedings before the Delhi High Court will now determine whether the survivor’s delayed appeal can be entertained and whether the sentence awarded to Sengar and others in the custodial death case should be enhanced.
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