The Delhi High Court today suspended the jail term of expelled BJP leader Kuldeep Singh Sengar, who is serving a life sentence in the 2017 Unnao rape case. The court granted relief subject to strict conditions, including movement restrictions and regular police reporting.
A bench of Justices Subramonium Prasad and Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar directed Sengar to furnish a personal bond of 15 lakh rupees with three Delhi-based sureties of the same amount and to stay in Delhi, report weekly to the police and deposit his passport.
The court barred him from entering a 5-kilometre radius of the survivor’s Delhi residence or threatening her or her mother, warning that any violation would cancel bail. Sengar’s sentence has been suspended by the high court till the pendency of his appeal challenging his conviction and sentence in the rape case. He has challenged a December 2019 trial court verdict in the rape case.
The rape case and other connected cases were transferred to Delhi from a trial court in Uttar Pradesh on the directions of the Supreme Court in 2019. Sengar also has a pending appeal in the custodial death of the survivor’s father, for which he was sentenced to 10 years in prison and has sought suspension of sentence, citing time already served.
