Lucknow : Kuldeep Singh Sengar, the BJP lawmaker arrested on rape charges only after the high court’s stinging indictment of the state police, was today ordered to spend the next seven days in custody of the Central Bureau of Investigation, or CBI.
The lawmaker was arrested last evening by the CBI on a charge of raping a 16-year-old girl from Unnao, about 60 km from Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow. The BJP lawmaker has been charged under the stringent sexual offences law to protect children and the penal code.
In court on Friday, the judges noted how the police had not acted on a rape complaint of the 16-year-old girl but rushed to register false cases against her family, and how her father was thrashed "by the brother and goons of Kuldeep Singh" before being arrested "on a petty offence".
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had agreed to transfer the case to the CBI this week in face of mounting pressure to crack down on the powerful Unnao lawmaker. A special team that the government had set up to probe the case was disbanded and the state police refused to arrest the lawmaker, because the case was going to be probed by the CBI.
