Unnao case: Decide on Sengar’s plea for sentence suspension in custodial death case, SC tells HC

The Supreme Court on Monday told the Delhi High Court to decide within three months a petition by expelled Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kuldeep Singh Sengar seeking the suspension of his 10-year jail term in connection with the custodial death of the complainant’s father in the Unnao rape case, PTI reported.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and NV Anjaria directed the High Court to accord an out-of-turn hearing to Sengar’s petition.

It issued the directions while refusing to entertain the former Uttar Pradesh MLA’s application challenging an order of the High Court on January 19 that rejected his petition to suspend the sentence, PTI reported.

In its January 19 order, the High Court noted that Sengar had spent nearly seven and a half years in custody out of the total punishment of 10 years in the custodial death case and that there had been a delay in deciding his appeal against his conviction.

However, it said that the delay was partly because of Sengar, who had filed several applications.

This order came nearly a month after the High Court on December 23 suspended Sengar’s life sentence in the main rape case during the pendency of his appeal against his conviction in the matter.

Despite the order, Sengar was to remain in jail as he was also serving the 10-year sentence in connection with the custodial death case. However, the Supreme Court on December 29 stayed the High Court order on the suspension of his life sentence.

During the hearing in the Supreme Court on Monday, the chief justice criticised the counsel representing the complainant for giving statements in the media about the case, PTI reported.

“We are not sitting in an ivory tower,” the news agency quoted Kant as saying. “We know a media trial is going on outside.”

The chief justice added that he would not tolerate any “parallel trial” outside the court.

The bench was also told during the proceedings that Sengar’s appeal was slated to come up for hearing before the High Court on February 11.

The case

In December 2019, a trial court in Delhi convicted Sengar and sentenced him to life for raping a woman in Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao in 2017. She was a minor at the time.

In March 2020, Sengar and his brother, among others, were also sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment for the killing of the woman’s father in judicial custody.

The killing had taken place after the father had been arrested in April 2018 allegedly at Sengar’s behest under the Arms Act. He died in custody on April 9, 2018.

In June 2024, the High Court rejected the petition filed by Sengar for the suspension of his sentence in the custodial death case.

The petition rejected on January 19 in the High Court was his second attempt to secure interim relief in the matter.