Unnao rape case: Allahabad high court pulls up UP government

Source – indiatimes.com

ALLAHABAD: The Allahabad High Court on Thursday slammed the Uttar Pradesh government on the Unnao rape incident and questioned the delay in the arrest of accused BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar.

The court will pronounce its verdict on Friday.

It had on Wednesday treated a letter written by a senior advocate as a PIL and had asked the state government to provide details of actions taken.

During the hearing, UP advocate general Raghvendra Singh informed the court that on August 17, 2017, an application was sent to the chief minister’s office in which allegations of rape were made against the BJP MLA of Unnao district. The application was forwarded to concerned officers in Unnao district for appropriate action.
On this, the division bench comprising Chief Justice Dilip Babasaheb Bhosale and Justice Suneet Kumar questioned what else has been done in this case and whether any arrests were made so far. In his response, the advocate general informed the court that three of the accused in the case, including the brother of MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar, were arrested.

The court then asked if the arrest of Kuldeep Singh Sengar was expected. To this the advocate general said that he is not in a position to make any statement and the police will proceed in accordance with the law. He said any step would be taken only after recording the statement of complainant and the witnesses.
“According to the SIT report, medical officers and police officers – all were hands in glove with the accused to save them. You acted on this report against those officers, but, to arrest the rape accused, you need to do further investigation,” the court said.

“Police is not ready to register an FIR of a minor rape victim. In spite of the SIT report, you are repeating that we can only take any action after further investigation. If this is the conduct of the police in the state, whom will a victim approach to register a complaint? If this is the stand you are repeatedly taking then we will be forced to observe in our order that law and order has collapsed in the state,” the court added.
During the court proceedings, senior advocate Gopal Swaroop Chaturvedi, whose letter was treated as a PIL, said that the SIT headed by senior police officers conducted a preliminary investigation and then filed a report after which an FIR was registered and the state government still wants to conduct further investigation before arresting the accused MLA.

In cases involving heinous crimes like rape against a minor, accused should have been arrested, added Chaturvedi.

In his letter addressed to the Chief Justice, the senior advocate has demanded court-monitored investigation into the case and also into the subsequent death of the survivor’s father in judicial custody.

Earlier on April 11, while treating the letter as PIL, the court had observed, “What is disturbing, as submitted by Chaturvedi, is that the father of the prosecutrix, for no reason, came to be arrested and was in custody, where, we are informed, he was mercilessly beaten and he succumbed to the injuries on April 10, 2018. We fail to understand why the investigating agency, instead of arresting accused persons, arrested the complainant, in connection with this case.”