New Delhi / SC orders transfer of Unnao rape survivor's uncle to Delhi jail

The Supreme Court on Friday deferred shifting of the Unnao rape survivor, injured in an accident last week, to a hospital in Delhi while ordering that her uncle be shifted from a Rae Bareli jail to Tihar in the national capital.

The survivor and her lawyer were critically injured, while her two aunts died, in an accident that is now being probed by the CBI as the kin had alleged that BJP MLA Kuldeep Sengar was behind the conspiracy to kill the girl. Sengar, 52, is also accused of raping the girl in 2017.

“So far as the movement of victim and lawyer for medical treatment is concerned there appears to be hesitation on the part of the family members, so we shall defer giving orders to Monday,” the top court said.

The survivor’s lawyer earlier told the court that the mother was of the view that for the present the survivor should remain in the hospital since she was unconscious. But the mother wanted to reserve the right to seek her shifting outside Lucknow. “Mother says the doctors must at least provide her with a daily medical bulletin,” the lawyer said.

Both the survivor and the lawyer’s kin, however, sought daily health bulletins from Lucknow’s KGMU hospital, where the two are being treated.

The top court also ordered that the survivor’s uncle, who is in Rae Bareli jail in a two-decade old attempt to murder case, be shifted to Delhi’s Tihar and sought a compliance report by the state on Monday. The counsel of the Uttar Pradesh government, earlier, contended that the survivor’s uncle was safe and secure in Rae Bareli jail and that the state had no objection if the court wanted to move him.

The four-time lawmaker, Sengar is accused of raping the girl when she went to meet him along with a neighbour to seek his help in getting a job in June 2017.

This was followed by two years of ordeal that saw the girl going missing for almost 10 days, accusing police of not letting her name the MLA in her complaint, her father being beaten up and dying in custody and a key witness dying in 2018.

The case was finally handed over to the CBI in 2018 and it booked Sengar, his brother and five others in the case.

In the past few weeks, preceding the rape survivor’s road accident, she and her family had written several letters to the police, CBI, government officials and the CJI alleging threat to life from the MLA. They accused the MLA and his henchmen of intimidating them and asking them to withdraw the case.