BJP MLA Ramdular Gond disqualified after 25-year jail in rape case

BJP MLA Ramdular Gond, who was recently sentenced to 25 years of rigorous imprisonment for raping a girl nine years ago, has been disqualified as a member of the Uttar Pradesh assembly, official sources said on Saturday.

According to the Representation of the People Act, a lawmaker sentenced to imprisonment for two years or more shall be disqualified "from the date of such conviction" and remain disqualified for another six years after serving time.

Ahsan Ullah Khan, additional district and sessions judge of the MP-MLA court in Sonbhadra, had also imposed a fine of Rs 10 lakh on Gond. The sum would be given to the rape survivor who is now married and the mother of an eight-year-old girl.

Special Public Prosecutor Satyaprakash Tripathi said the court held the MLA from Duddhi seat -- reserved for Scheduled Tribes -- guilty on December 12 and announced the quantum of punishment three days later.

The rape incident took place in 2014 and a case was registered against Gond under IPC sections 376 (rape) and 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) as well as under the provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act on the complaint of the rape survivor's brother.

Gond was not an MLA at that time while his wife was a gram pradhan, Tripathi said.

The trial in the case started in a Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO Act), but was later transferred to the MP-MLA court when Gond was elected as a legislator.

Uttar Pradesh has seen disqualification of several lawmakers after their conviction in separate cases.

In October 2022, Samajwadi Party MLA (Rampur Sadar seat) Azam Khan and the BJP's Vikram Singh Saini (Khatauli MLA) were disqualified.

While the action against Khan was taken after being sentenced to three years in a 2019 hate speech case, Saini was disqualified after he got a two-year jail term in a 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots case.

Kuldeep Singh Sengar, an MLA from Unnao, was disqualified from the assembly in February 2020 following his conviction in a rape case. He was earlier expelled by the BJP.

Azam Khan's son and Samajwadi Party MLA Abdullah Azam Khan lost his Assembly membership in February this year after being sentenced to two years in jail for staging a sit-in on a highway after his cavalcade was stopped by the police for checking following an attack on a CRPF camp in Rampur on December 31, 2007.