The incident took place in 2014 and a case was registered against Ramdular Gond under relevant IPC sections and the stringent POCSO Act.
Uttar Pradesh News: A court in Uttar Pradesh’s Sonbhadra district on Friday sentenced BJP MLA Ramdular Gond to 25 years in jail for raping a minor girl nine years ago in 2014. Gond, who represents the Duddhi Assembly constituency, will now be disqualified from contesting the Uttar Pradesh Pradesh Assembly under the Representation of the People’s Act.
The law requires that any lawmaker sentenced to a term of imprisonment of two years or more shall be disqualified “from the date of such conviction” and shall remain disqualified for an additional six years after serving the sentence.
Judge Ahsan Ullah Khan, an Additional District and Sessions Judge of the MP-MLA court in Sonbhadra, sentenced Ramdular Gond to 25 years of rigorous imprisonment and also imposed a fine of Rs 10 lakh on the convict, which would be used to compensate the victim of to rehabilitate rape. is now married and the mother of an eight-year-old girl.
Special public prosecutor Satyaprakash Tripathi said the court found the MLA from the Duddhi Assembly seat – reserved for Scheduled Tribes – guilty on December 12.
What is the case against Ramdular Gond?
The incident took place in 2014 and a case was registered against Gond under IPC sections 376 (rape) and 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) and under the provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses (POCSO) Act following the complaint of the rape survivor’s brother.
Gond was not an MLA at that time while his wife was a gram pradhan, Tripathi added. The trial in the case started in a POCSO court but was later transferred to the MP-MLA court when Gond was elected as a legislator.
Before the verdict was delivered on Friday, the MLA’s lawyer urged the court to seek minimum punishment. He also assured the court that Gond would take full care of the rape survivor’s family.
The rape survivor’s brother expressed satisfaction over the court’s verdict, saying she got justice after a long period of struggle. The MLA, who was lodged in the district jail, was produced before the court and taken back to jail after the verdict was pronounced.
Gond will join the infamous list
Now that Gond faces the prospect of losing the Assembly membership, he will join a shameful list of lawmakers from Uttar Pradesh who have faced similar action in the past.
In October 2022, Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan, who represented the Rampur Sadar seat in the Assembly, and the BJP’s Vikram Singh Saini, an MLA from Khatauli in Muzaffarnagar, were disqualified from the Uttar Pradesh Assembly.
While the action against Khan was taken after he was sentenced to three years in jail in a hate speech case in 2019, Saini was disqualified after he was given a two-year jail term in a 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots case.
Kuldeep Singh Sengar, an MLA from Unnao, was disqualified from the assembly in February 2020 after his conviction in a rape case. He was earlier expelled by the BJP.
Azam Khan’s son and Samajwadi Party MLA Abdullah Azam Khan lost his membership of the Assembly in February this year after he was sentenced to two years in jail for organizing a sit-in on a highway after his cavalcade was stopped by police for checking after an attack on a CRPF camp in Rampur on December 31, 2007.
In May this year, BSP MP from Ghazipur Afzal Ansari was disqualified from the Lok Sabha after being sentenced to four years in jail in a kidnapping and murder case.
Afzal Ansari, the MP from Ghazipur, was convicted by a Parliament/MLA court in connection with the murder of BJP MLA from Ghazipur Krishnanand Rai in 2005 and the kidnapping and murder of Varanasi-based trader Nand Kishore Rungta in 1997.
His brother Mukhtar was also convicted in the same case and sentenced to ten years in prison.
(With PTI inputs)