New Delhi, February 19 The Delhi High Court on Thursday sought the response of expelled BJP leader Kuldeep Sengar and others to a plea filed by the Unnao rape survivor seeking to enhance their 10-year prison sentence to the death penalty in the custodial death case of her father.
A bench of justices Navin Chawla and Ravinder Dudeja issued notices to Sengar and other convicts in response to the survivor's plea seeking permission to file the appeal more than 1940 days after the 2020 trial court order convicting and sentencing them.
The court observed that the maintainability of the appeal must be decided first.
In her appeal, the survivor argued that Sengar and other convicts should be found guilty under Section 302 of the IPC for murder and sentenced to death, and that the trial court's decision, which found them guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, should be modified.
The CBI's counsel stated that the main parties in the survivor's appeal were Sengar and others, and that the agency had no objections.
The bench noted that on February 9, the Supreme Court had directed the high court to give Sengar's appeal, challenging his conviction in the custodial death case, an expedited hearing, and that it should be decided within three months.
The top court had also instructed the high court to decide the survivor's appeal seeking an increase in the sentence in the present case.
Sengar was convicted of raping the minor survivor and sentenced to life imprisonment on December 20, 2019.
The girl was allegedly kidnapped and raped by Sengar in 2017 when she was a minor.
On March 13, 2020, Sengar along with his brother Jaideep Sengar alias Atul Singh was sentenced to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment by the trial court, which also imposed a fine of Rs 10 lakh, in the custodial death case of the rape survivor's father.
The girl's father was arrested at the alleged behest of the accused under the Arms Act and died in custody on April 9, 2018, due to police brutality.
The trial court had said that "no leniency" could be shown for killing a family's "sole breadwinner."
However, the trial court did not find the accused guilty of murder under the IPC and awarded the maximum sentence of 10 years for the offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder to the convicts under section 304 of the IPC, after finding that there was no intention to kill.
The case was transferred from the trial court in Uttar Pradesh to Delhi at the direction of the Supreme Court on August 1, 2019.
