The Uttar Pradesh Police on Tuesday arrested Atul Singh Sengar, the brother of a Bharatiya Janata Party MLA accused of raping an 18-year-old woman (when she was a minor) in Unnao last year, for beating her father to death earlier this week.
And with pressure building up on it to act, the state set up a special investigation team to look into the case.
The woman has alleged that BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar and his aides raped her last June. She also said the police did not investigate her allegations and failed to name Sengar in an official document that recorded her complaint. The BJP MLA has rejected the charges as a conspiracy by his political opponents.
The woman alleges that when her family returned to Unnao from Delhi earlier this month to file a petition seeking Kuldeep Singh’s name be included in the rape complaint, his brother and his aides assaulted her father. She also claimed that her father “was killed at the behest of the BJP MLA inside the jail”.
The woman says the family received several threats asking them to withdraw the complaint against the MLA.
Her father had earlier accused the legislator and his men of accosting him in Makhi, a town in Unnao, and threatening him.
“The SIT will go into the entire gamut of issues involved in the incident,” ADG (law and order) Anand Kumar said in Lucknow.
The woman attempted suicide in front of UP CM Yogi Adityanath’s residence on Sunday. Her father was allegedly assaulted by the MLA’s men last week. He was arrested a day later and sent to judicial custody. He died on Monday after he collapsed in prison.
Police spokesperson Rahul Srivastava said on Tuesday that the MLA’s brother, Atul Singh Sengar, was arrested for attacking the father on April 3. The police have added murder charges against him, said DIG (law and order) Praveen Kumar.
The father’s post-mortem report revealed he died of shock and septicaemia from the beating and had 14 injury marks on his body, the report said.
Dr Anand Prakash, a senior gastro surgeon at the Sanjay Gandhi Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, said such injuries suggest the victim had been badly beaten up, with possible blows to the abdomen.
The NHRC took suo motu cognizance of reports on the “mysterious death of a rape victim’s father in judicial custody in Unnao” and issued a notice to the UP government and the police chief, seeking a report in the case. It asked the authorities to ensure “the aggrieved family is not subjected to further harassment”.
The NHRC also said it expected an explanation from the UP DGP within 24 hours for not communicating the custodial death of the woman’s father.
Chief minister Adityanath has promised strict action and reprimanded Kuldeep Sengar. A PIL was filed in the SC, calling for a CBI probe into the case. The PIL demanded compensation for the woman and her family. (With HT)
