Congress Leader, Activist Detained During Protest Against Bail In Unnao Case

Several protesters, including activist Yogita Bhayana and Congress leader Mumtaz Patel, were detained during a sit-in near Parliament against the bail granted to Unnao rape convict and expelled BJP leader Kuldeep Sengar.

Bhayana, Patel, and some other protesters congregated near the Parliament complex around 4 pm on Saturday and began shouting slogans, demanding that the court order be revoked. On Tuesday, the Delhi High Court had suspended the sentence of the former MLA, who was convicted of raping a 17-year-old girl in 2017.

The police announced that the area near the Parliament was not a designated place for protests and asked them to leave, and detained them when they refused.

Bhayana and Patel said the protests were necessary to draw attention to a very important issue.

"This is not just the story of the Unnao rape survivor. Things are now beyond tolerance. New cases keep coming up. Powerful people are involved in rape and people in positions of power are implicated. In the Unnao case, our protest activated the CBI (to appeal against the Delhi high court order in the Supreme Court), and now the Ankita Bhandari case is coming up," Bhayana said.

The activist was referring to the murder of a receptionist at the Vanantra resort in Rishikesh, who was also being coerced into sex acts. One of the convicts in the murder is the son of a BJP leader.

Patel accused the government of not acting against people connected to the BJP.

"The government talks about women's empowerment, but daughters suffer atrocities and are left to wander helplessly. People connected with the BJP do such things because they have the government's support," she alleged.

On Saturday, the survivor also accused the CBI of not standing by her as she fought a legal battle.

"Had the CBI stood with my lawyer, we wouldn't have had to see this day. We would have won, and they would have lost... Their (Sengar's) family is bursting crackers. But ask my family. My father was killed. My husband and I were fired from our jobs. What will we eat? Where do we go? I have two newborns," she was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.

On Wednesday, the survivor's mother was also allegedly forced to jump off a moving bus after she and her daughter were stopped from addressing the media.

Sengar's sentence was suspended by the high court till the pendency of his appeal challenging his 2019 conviction in the rape case. The court also directed Sengar not to come within a 5-km radius of the victim's house and not threaten her or her mother.

(With inputs from PTI)