BJP MLA gets 25 years in jail for raping minor girl nine years ago
The family had alleged that Gond sexually assaulted the girl when she had gone to a field on the Myorvpur village outskirts. Gond was not an MLA at the time.
A court in Uttar Pradesh’s Sonbhadra district on Friday sentenced Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Ramdular Gond to 25 years for raping a minor girl nine years ago. Gond represents Sonbhadra’s Duddhi constituency.
According to the Representation of the People Act, a lawmaker sentenced to imprisonment of two years or more shall be disqualified “from the date of such conviction” and remain disqualified for another six years after serving time.
The survivor’s counsel, Vikas Shakya, said the Sonbhadra MP-MLA court of additional district judge (I) Ahsanullah Khan, which held Gond guilty of the crime on Wednesday, also slapped a penalty of ₹10 lakh on the MLA. The sentence of 25 years includes 20 years of rigorous imprisonment.
Gond was brought to the court from a jail where he was lodged after his conviction.
He was booked in November 2014 by Myorpur police under sections 376 (rape) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence) of the IPC, and relevant sections of the Pocso (Protection of Children from Sexual offences) Act, based on a complaint by the kin of the survivor, a teenage girl at the time.
The family had alleged that Gond sexually assaulted the girl when she had gone to a field on the Myorvpur village outskirts. Gond was not an MLA at the time.
Special public prosecutor Satyaprakash Tripathi said before the pronouncement of the verdict, Gond’s lawyer urged the court for minimum punishment. He also assured the court that Gond would take complete care of the family of the rape survivor.
His wife was the gram pradhan at the time of the incident, he added.
After registering the case, police arrested and jailed Gond in 2014. After spending about three months in jail, he was released on bail amid an ongoing police investigation. A charge sheet was filed and a trial in the case was going on at the district POCSO court. Gond, who was previously with the Samajwadi Party, contested the election from Duddhi in 2022 as a BJP candidate and won it. After his election as an MLA, the matter was transferred to the MP-MLA court that completed the hearing in the matter in November.
Shakya said the police took the MLA into judicial custody on the orders of the court. He added that the court ordered that the entire fine amount of the fine would be given to the survivor as compensation and for rehabilitation.
(With agency inputs)
