Unnao Case: The BJP expelled Kuldeep Sengar from the party on Thursday.
Highlights
- The CBI is conducting searches in four districts in Unnao rape case
- The girl is still critical and on the ventilator
- The BJP expelled Kuldeep Sengar from the party on Thursday
Officers of the Central Bureau of Investigation are raiding at least 17 places in Uttar Pradesh as part of their probe into the alleged rape of a teenage girl by expelled BJP lawmaker Kuldeep Sengar.
A CBI team had on Saturday gone to a jail in Sitapur, where Kuldeep Sengar has been lodged for over a year, to check the visitors' records and who he has been receiving at the prison.
"The CBI is conducting searches in four districts - Lucknow, Unnao, Banda and Fatehpur - and on some premises of the accused... Investigation is continuing," the probe agency said in a statement.
The family of the girl has alleged Kuldeep Sengar engineered a road accident two weeks ago that left the rape survivor and her lawyer seriously injured and two of her aunts dead. Their car had a collision with a truck whose number plates were blackened. A separate probe into the accident is going on.
The girl is still critical and on the ventilator.
The truck driver and the cleaner are also being questioned. The truck's owner had claimed that the number plates were blackened to evade recovery agents on EMI defaults. However, the loan agent clarified that the truck owner was not behind on payments, raising fresh controversy on the case.
The BJP expelled Kuldeep Sengar from the party on Thursday amid waves of public outrage over the rape survivor's ordeal - from losing her father in police custody to two aunts dying in a road accident. One of the aunts was also a witness in the rape case.
The expelled BJP leader allegedly raped the teenage girl in June 2017 in his hometown Unnao when she had come looking for a job.
The Supreme Court has said four cases linked to the Unnao rape survivor would be transferred out of Uttar Pradesh to Delhi, after the family wrote to the Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi alleging threats from the jailed lawmaker.
The CBI, which filed a chargesheet against the lawmaker a year ago, has been spurred into action after the Supreme Court this week gave a seven-day deadline to the agency to investigate the deadly road accident.
According to the FIR, threats from Kuldeep Sengar and his men increased over the last few months after the Allahabad High Court rejected the request of a co-accused in the rape case for bail. The girl's uncle said he had asked the family to move from Unnao to Delhi.