Yesterday, the victim of the Unnao rape case was travelling to Rae Bareli with her two aunts, and her lawyer Mahendra Singh when their vehicle was hit by a truck, rendering them critically injured. The vehicle collided with a truck going in the opposite direction towards Lalganj in UP.
The victim’s aunts had received fatal injuries. Advocate Vimal Kumar Yadav, a junior of the victim’s lawyer Mahendra Singh, was quoted by ANI saying that the victim’s 2 aunts had succumbed to their injuries soon. The victim and the lawyer are serious.
BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar is the primary accused in the high profile rape case. The case pertains to how the victim was lured and raped by a host of people, including the BJP MLA and how co-ordinated and meticulous schemes were hatched to silent the victim and intimidate her relatives by framing them in police cases based on flippant charges. Let’s look at the sequence of events leading to the accident in which the victim’s aunts have died, while the victim is battling for her life.
Key junctures in the Unnao Rape Case
According to the victim, she was lured by a woman named Shashi Singh, Nidhi Singh-her daughter and Shubham Singh-her son to move to Kanpur, under the guise of giving her a job. The victim alleged that on the night of June 11, 2017, she was raped multiple times by Shubham Singh and his driver Awdesh Singh. She was later raped by unknown people and sold to one Brajesh Yadav for Rs 60000.
An FIR was registered under section 363 and 366 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) on 20 June 2017 against Shubham Singh and Awdhesh Tiwari. On 21 June, Uttar Pradesh Police tracked her down and recovered her from a village in Auraiya. She was sent for a medical examination on the same day. On 22 June 2017, she recorded her statement in front of a Judicial Magistrate under Section 164 of Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) in which she narrated her ordeal and named Shubham Singh, Awdhesh Tiwari, Brajesh Yadav and other unknown captors for the abduction and gang-rape. A second FIR was registered later under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) and all the accused were sent to jail.
On August 17, 2017, the victim wrote an open letter addressed to the Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath claiming that on June 4, 2017, at around 8 PM in the evening, she was raped at the residence of the BJP MLA from Unnao, Kuldeep Singh Sengar. She mentioned that she entered the house for seeking Sengar’s assistance for getting her employment. She also stated that these details were reported to the police on June 22, 2017, but the police didn’t allow her to name MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar in her complaint.
After being assaulted by Sengar’s supporters, the victim’s father was arrested by the police on April 5, 2018, and sent to judicial custody. His medical examination found consistent injuries after having been beaten. The police didn’t arrest Atul Sengar, Kuldeep Singh Sengar’s brother, who allegedly led the assault against the victim’s father. Three days later, on April 8, the victim tried to immolate herself in front of CM Yogi Adityanath’s residence, stating no action was initiated against the accused. A day later, the victim’s father, Pappu Singh succumbed to his injuries.
Following the death of the victim’s father, the local police sprang into action, arresting Atul Sengar and suspending 6 conniving police officials. Pappu Singh’s death and the victim’s self-immolation attempt triggered a widespread protest, after which an FIR was filed against Sengar. The case was shifted from local magistrate to Allahabad High Court and the Central Bureau of Investigation(CBI) took over the probe.
Following the Allahabad High Court order, MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar was arrested by the CBI. The next day, on April 14, 2018, the CBI also arrested Shashi Singh, who allegedly took the victim to Sengar on the day of the incident. The CBI filed its first charge-sheet on July 11, 2018, naming Bhartiya Janata Party member of Legislative Assembly Kuldeep Singh Sengar as an accused in the alleged rape of the 17-year-old teenager. CBI filed another charge-sheet on 13 July 2018 and named Kuldeep Singh Sengar and his brother, three policemen and five other people for allegedly framing the Unnao rape survivor’s father.
Mohammed Yunus, who was a key witness in the attack on the survivor’s father, who later succumbed to his injuries when he was sent to jail by the local police after being framed in a fake case of possession of illegal firearms, was found dead under mysterious circumstances. Yunus ran a grocery shop at the intersection where the legislator’s brother and his aides attacked the gang-rape victim’s father.
In an 18-year-old gun-firing case, the gang-rape victim’s uncle who spearheaded a campaign accusing BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar of the rape of his niece and the death of the rape victim’s father, his elder brother, in custody, was arrested on 21 November 2018.
Following the accident in Rae Bareli in which two women died and the gang-rape victim seriously injured, a murder case is filed against the BJP legislator Kuldeep Sengar. An FIR has been registered against Sengar, his brother Manoj Singh and eight others at Raebareli’s Guru Baksh Ganj police station for “hatching a criminal conspiracy to kill the rape survivor and her family”.
