New Delhi: A day after the Delhi high court suspended the life sentence of former BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar, the convict in the Unnao rape case, the victim and her family members met Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi and urged him to provide help to the family including shifting them to any Congress ruled state fearing safety.
The Unnao rape case survivor on Wednesday evening along with activist Yogita Bhayanak arrived at 10 Janpath to meet Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
According to sources, during the meeting, the victim and her family members sought help from the Congress leader.
The sources said that the survivor and her family made three demands with the Congress leader that included to help them get a top lawyer to fight against Sengar in the Supreme Court.
The sources said that Rahul Gandhi promised the survivor and her family that he will do that.
The sources also said that the survivor and her family also requested him to help them relocate to a Congress ruled state as they feared being murdered and they weren’t confident of their security.
The source said that Rahul Gandhi, who is a Lok Sabha MP from Uttar Pradesh’s Rae Bareli, said he will.
Even victim’s husband requested the Congress leader for a better job.l to which Rahul Gandhi said he will look into it.
The sources said that during the visit of the Unnao shrvivor.andnher family, CPP chairperson Sonia Gandhi was also present in the meeting.
The source said that both of them have promised the Unnao family that they will do everything in their capacity to ensure they get justice and security.
Meanwhile, while speaking to the media, the survivor said that she hoped to meet President Droupadi Murmu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah as well.
Before meeting Rahul Gandhi, she said that “we just want to meet him and tell him what we are going through”.
“I also want to meet the Prime Minister and Amit Shah. Our President is a woman. I want to meet all of them and apprise them of the injustice done to me,” she added.
The survivor, who was a minor when Sengar committed the crime in June 2017, met Rahul Gandhi hours after he in a post on X, condemned the manhandling of her by security forces at Delhi’s India Gate, where she was protesting the grant of bail to Sengar.
In a post on X, Rahul Gandhi earlier in the day wrote, “Is such treatment of a gang rape survivor appropriate? Is it her ‘fault’ that she has the courage to raise her voice for justice? The fact that her perpetrator (former BJP MLA Sengar) has been granted bail is extremely disappointing and shameful—especially when the survivor is being repeatedly harassed and is living under the shadow of fear.”
“We are not just becoming a dead economy-with such inhuman incidents, we are also turning into a dead society. In a democracy, raising a voice of dissent is a right, and suppressing it is a crime. The survivor deserves respect, safety, and justice-not helplessness, fear, and injustice,” he said, while commenting on the post of Bhayana wo had tweeted the video of manhandling of the rape survivor.
On Tuesday, the Delhi High Court suspended the jail term of Sengar, who is serving life imprisonment in the 2017 Unnao rape case, saying he has already served seven years and five months in prison.
Sengar was convicted in December 2019, months after the Supreme Court shifted the trial from Uttar Pradesh to Delhi.
His life term will remain suspended for the duration of the pendency of his appeal challenging his conviction and sentencing.
It also directed him not to come within a 5-km radius of the victim’s residence in Delhi and not to threaten her or her mother.
Sengar will, however, remain in jail since he is also serving 10 years’ imprisonment in the custodial death case of the victim’s father and has not been granted bail in that case.
