Mayawati took no action against jailed BSP MP Atul Rai for the last two years even as the the courts in Uttar Pradesh kept terming the rape case against him as serious and had refused to discharge him in the matter and repeatedly denied him bail while the victim had kept complaining of threats from the MP.
The rape victim died on Tuesday after self-immolating outside the Supreme Court last week, saying the UP police were trying to shield the MP. Ahead of the UP elections, this case seems to have striking similarities with the rape case involving former BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar who was sacked by the BJP from the party after much criticism. Mayawati however has not sacked Rai from the party and he continues to be a BSP MP from Ghosi who has attended Parliament for only a single day since 2019, on parole to take oath. The victim was also booked in a fraud case on the complaint of the MP’s brother.
BSP spokesperson Dharamveer Chaudhary did not offer any comment when asked by News18 if BSP would sack Rai now.
News18 went through court documents to find that court has been passing adverse orders against Rai. In 2019, both the Allahabad Special Judge (MP/MLA Court) and the Allahabad High Court (HC) dismissed Rai’s petition to be discharged from the rape case before a trial.
“There is no sufficient ground to hold that no offence is made out against Rai and (there is) no sufficient ground for discharging him,” the HC said in its order. The state had then told HC that the accused Atul Rai was delaying the disposal of trial and that charges had been framed in sessions trial upon the direction of HC.
The high court also refused to grant bail to Rai on two occasions in 2019 and 2021. Bail was denied to him in June this year by the HC considering the seriousness of the matter and the stage of the trail. The state government argued before the court that lot of key witnesses were still to depose in the trail, cited Rai’s long criminal record and said him getting bail will hence impact the trial.
The only relief Rai got from the Allahabad High court was in 2020 when he was granted parole for two days to be present in Parliament in Delhi for oath-taking as a BSP MP. This was because he would have otherwise lost his MP seat.
Victim Not an Innocent Lady, Rai said; She complained of Threats
The High Court record while dealing with bail application of Rai in 2019 revealed that the victim girl had even approached the Chief Justice of India vide a letter on August 9, 2019, praying for protection of herself and her family members as she was apprehending threats from Rai in the present case.
The HC record mentions the complainant saying that Rai is a history-sheeter with a long criminal history of 32 cases. “We have been apprised that most of the cases instituted against Rai are still pending and some of them are under Section 302 and other heinous offences,” the High Court order had said.
Rai kept arguing that the case was foisted on him due to political motive by his rival candidate of the ruling party, who lost the election against him in 2019. He said the FIR was lodged against him after an inordinate delay of nearly two months and blamed the high ups of the ruling party (BJP) of a deep-rooted conspiracy in collusion with the police and the complainant.
Rai also told the court that the girl was “not an innocent lady” and a student leader “who has been in habit of implicating innocent person and black mailing them for her ulterior motive.” This however had cut no ice with the court.
The victim approached the Supreme Court in March seeking transfer of the trial of the case from Allahabad to Delhi on grounds including threat to her life and SC had issued Rai a notice. The case was still to be heard again but the girl immolated herself outside the Supreme Court last week.
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