The costly road to justice for Unnao rape victim

The Unnao rape victim may have got justice, thirty months after being gangraped following the conviction of expelled BJP legislator Kuldeep Singh Sengar by a Delhi court on Monday, she had to pay a heavy price to get the same.

''We are very happy...he (Sengar) will now have to pay for his deeds...we want life sentence for him,'' said a woman relative of the victim in Unnao, about 70 kilometres from here while reacting to the verdict.

The road to justice, however, was not a smooth one and the victim and her family paid dearly for fighting a mighty lawmaker of the ruling party, whose diktat was the law in the district.

The victim, then a minor, was gangraped by Sengar and his supporters in June 2017. Her attempts to get a case of rape registered against Sengar and his goons proved futile as the local cops were at the latter's beck and call.

The victim lost four members of her family, including her father, since BJP lawmaker Sengar turned the family's enemy last year. One of the uncles of the victim had been hacked to death allegedly by the supporters of Sengar last year.

Within days after Sengar was arrested by the CBI in April last year, her father, whom the MLA had got arrested by the police on trumped up charges, died inside the jail under mysterious circumstances. The medical examination revealed multiple injuries on his body.

A few months later a truck smashed into the car in which the victim, her two aunts and her lawyer were travelling in the neighbouring Raebareli district killing the aunts on the spot and wounding the victim and the lawyer critically.

A key witness in the case, Yunus Khan, had also died under mysterious circumstances in the village.

''We have suffered a lot....our lives will never be the same...the spirits of our dear ones will rest in peace if Sengar is sentenced to life imprisonment,'' the relative said.