The Delhi High Court on Tuesday suspended the jail term of expelled BJP leader Kuldeep Singh Sengar, who is serving life imprisonment in the Unnao rape case. A bench of Justices Subramonium Prasad and Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar released Sengar on bail while directing him to furnish a personal bond of Rs 15 lakh with three sureties of the like amount. The high court also directed Sengar not to come within a 5 km radius of the victim's house and not threaten her or her mother. "Violation of any of the conditions would lead to cancellation of bail," the court said.
Sengar's sentence has been suspended by the high court till the pendency of his appeal challenging his conviction and sentence in the rape case. He has challenged the December 2019 trial court verdict in the rape case. The minor girl was kidnapped and raped by Sengar in 2017. The rape case and other connected cases were transferred to Delhi from a trial court in Uttar Pradesh on the directions of the Supreme Court on August 1, 2019. Sengar's appeal against his conviction in the case of the survivor's father's custodial death case is also pending, where he has sought suspension of sentence on the ground that he has already spent a substantial time in jail. He was sentenced to 10 years in jail in the custodial death case.