Unnao case: Court lashes at Sengar's counsel for trying to "demolish" rape survivor's character

A Delhi court on Monday lashed at the counsel for expelled BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar for trying to "demolish" the character of the rape survivor during the trial.

The court convicted Sengar for raping a woman in Unnao in 2017, when she was a minor.

District Judge Dharmesh Sharma referred to a separate case of alleged gang rape of the woman by three other persons and said Sengar's counsel in a "very strategic manner" tried to "kill two birds/cases with one stone by attempting to demolish the character of the rape survivor".

The gang rape case is separate from the rape case in which Sengar was convicted on Monday. While she was raped by Sengar on June 4, 2017, the rape survivor was allegedly gang raped by three others on June 11, 2017 in Unnao. The trial in the gang rape case is yet to commence in the trial court here.

The court further said that the defence even tried to influence the rape case by trying to prove that the entire gang rape case was a "sham".

"Defence has in a very strategic manner attempted to tread or venture into the spectrum of the alleged gang rape, the trial of which is yet to commence and the defence has tried to kill two birds/cases with one stone by attempting to demolish the character of the rape survivor but also mounting an attack that the entire case was a sham and bogus," it said.

The court also observed that three other young girls in the rape survivor's family were also being subjected to "shame, disgust and indignity in society".

"The defence miserably fails to prove that the rape survivor's uncle orchestrated the entire false complaint against Sengar to settle old scores since it was not conceivable that the woman and her mother were not oblivious or unmindful of vulnerability of three other young girls in the family who started to be subjected to shame, disgust and indignity in the society/community.