The CBI probe in the politically sensitive Unnao gang-rape case has corroborated the survivor’s charge that BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar raped her at his home in Uttar Pradesh’s Makhi village on June 4 last year while his female accomplice, Shashi Singh, stood guard outside the room.
Sources said while the survivor had consistently named Sengar, MLA from Bangarmau, UP, among those who violated her, local police kept the MLA and some other accused out of the FIR filed on June 20 as well as the chargesheet filed later.
The central agency has recorded the survivor’s statement before a magistrate under CrPC Section 164, in which she “stood by” the allegations. Statements recorded under CrPC Section 164 are admissible in court as evidence.
The police, a CBI officer said, also delayed the girl’s medical examination and didn’t send the vaginal swab or her clothes to the forensic laboratory. “This was all deliberate and in connivance with the accused persons,” he added.
Sengar, Shashi Singh and the other accused, who were arrested by the CBI on April 13-14, were questioned at length and the agency is tying up the loose ends related to the police’s involvement in saving the MLA.
The UP government had handed over the case to the CBI following an uproar over the alleged effort by the Unnao police to save the BJP MLA.
Describing the sequence of events in 2017, as established by the CBI based on the survivor’s statement and independent investigation, an agency source said, “The girl was raped on June 4 by the MLA after she was brought to his house by Shashi Singh on the pretext of providing her a job. Between June 4 and June 10, the girl didn’t speak as she had been threatened. On June 11, she was abducted by three persons — Shubham Singh, Awadh Narayan and Brijesh Yadav. From June 11 till 19, the girl was kept mostly in an SUV and repeatedly gang-raped by these three while on the move.”
When the girl was finally found on June 20, some officers at the local police station in Makhi (Unnao) were “reluctant” to register an FIR. When they eventually registered one, they left out Sengar, Shashi Singh and a few others from it.
Prasanta Patnaik