NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday stayed a Delhi high court order granting bail to former BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar in connection with the Unnao rape case.A bench comprising CJI Surya Kant, Justice J K Maheshwari and Justice A G Masih, while hearing a plea challenging suspension of Sengar’s sentence, asked the former MLA to file a response within four weeks and posted the matter for hearing in the last week of January.
“Tentatively, we are inclined to stay the order. Generally, the principle is that once a person has walked out, the court does not take away liberty,” CJI Kant said.“But here, the situation is peculiar since he is inside the jail for another case,” he added.This came after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) moved the top court following the Delhi high court’s decision to suspend Sengar’s life sentence in the rape case.Representing the central probing agency, solicitor general Tushar Mehta urged the apex court to stay the high court order, calling the incident a “very horrific case.”
“This is a horrific case of rape of a child. Charges were framed under Section 376 of the IPC and Sections 5 and 6 of the POCSO Act,” Mehta said.“Conviction is on two counts. I have quoted all relevant parts. Paragraph 3 of my note has the conviction order. There is a finding recorded which says the child was less than 16 years old — 15 years and 10 months. Against this conviction, the appeal is pending,” he added.Mehta further argued that Sengar was a public servant at the time of the incident and pleaded for a minimum sentence of 20 years.“‘Public servant’ is not defined in the POCSO Act by reference. Whatever is defined in the IPC will be the definition. Public servant would mean a person in a dominant position over a child,” he said.A division bench of the Delhi high court, comprising Justice Subramonium Prasad and Justice Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar, while pronouncing the order, had noted that Sengar had already served seven years and five months in prison.The court ordered that the suspension of sentence would remain in force while his appeal against conviction is pending. While the high court granted him bail in the rape case, Sengar will continue to remain in jail as he is serving a separate 10-year sentence in a CBI case related to the custodial death of the survivor’s father. His appeal in that case, along with a plea seeking suspension of sentence, is also pending.The high court imposed several conditions while granting bail, including a personal bond of Rs 15 lakh with three sureties, a direction not to enter a 5-km radius of the survivor’s residence in Delhi, and a strict bar on threatening the survivor or her mother.In December 2019, former BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar was sentenced to life imprisonment along with a fine of Rs 25 lakh.