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Delhi HC rejects Unnao rape survivor plea to submit additional evidence about age
Court says appeal will be decided on existing evidence, rejects bid to add school records to establish survivor’s age
The Delhi high court on Wednesday dismissed a plea by the Unnao rape survivor seeking to introduce additional evidence to establish her age through school records, ruling that the case should be decided on the basis of evidence already on record.
A bench of justices Prathiba M Singh and Justice Madhu Jain was hearing the survivor application that sought the court’s permission to further examine two witnesses from the Uttar Pradesh school where she studied, including its principal Arun Kumar Singh and assistant teacher Virender Singh.
The court said that a letter from the survivor’s school clearly stated that no documents, including a birth certificate, were submitted at the time of her admission, as such documents were not required under the prevailing practice.
It further observed that the school’s principal had appeared and given evidence before the trial court, and the admission register had been produced. In these circumstances, the court held that there was no need to call for additional evidence at the stage of hearing the appeal.
“The application is rejected. The matter to be heard on the basis of evidence on record,” the court said in its order.
The application was preferred in expelled BJP leader Kuldeep Singh Sengar’s appeal against the trial court’s December 2019 order convicting him for raping a girl (then a minor) in Unnao and sentencing him to imprisonment for the remainder of his life.
The high court bench of justices Subramonium Prasad and Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar suspended on December 23, Sengar’s life sentence during the pendency of his appeal, concluding that he had already served seven years and five months in prison.
The court, in its ruling, held that Sengar was convicted under Section 5 (C) (aggravated penetrative sexual assault by a public servant) of the Pocso Act, but an elected representative did not fit the definition of a “public servant” under Section 21 of the IPC.
On December 29, the Supreme Court, however, stayed the high court’s order, saying that substantial questions of law had arisen in the matter that required consideration.
In her application before the Delhi high court, argued by advocate Mahmood Pracha and Sanwar Chaudhary, the survivor alleged that Sengar influenced the investigation to prevent the investigating officer (IO) from properly determining her age by obtaining the relevant records from Akhbar Bahadur Singh Public School in Unnao.
She contended that, at Sengar’s behest, the investigating officer instead examined one of his associates, later produced as a defence witness, who falsely claimed that she had studied at a government school in Khandesarai.
The former BJP leader is also serving a 10-year jail term in connection with the custodial death of the rape survivor’s father, who died on April 9, 2018.
