Overview
- According to the Supreme Court’s cause list, a three-judge vacation bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant will take up the CBI’s plea seeking a stay on the Delhi High Court’s December 23 suspension of sentence and grant of bail.
- The High Court ordered Sengar’s release on a Rs 15 lakh bond with three sureties and barred him from contacting the survivor or entering a five-kilometre radius of her residence, warning that any breach would cancel bail.
- The High Court held that aggravated POCSO and IPC Section 376(2) provisions did not apply because Sengar, then an MLA, was not a “public servant,” a reading the CBI contests as contrary to the statute’s purpose.
- The CBI has filed a Special Leave Petition and independent advocates Anjale Patel and Pooja Shilpkar have moved a separate challenge, while the survivor has lodged a fresh complaint alleging collusion by the original investigating officer and a judge.
- Sengar remains in custody despite bail in the rape case because he is serving a separate 10-year sentence related to the custodial death of the survivor’s father, with his appeal in that matter still pending.