The Sengar Case And The Architecture Of Selective Justice | MarginSpeak

The December 2025 suspension of Kuldeep Singh Sengar’s life sentence for rape and custodial death starkly illustrates the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s use of the criminal justice system as a political instrument—shielding ideological allies irrespective of crime, while pursuing dissenters irrespective of guilt. Although public outrage prompted a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) appeal and the Supreme Court has now stayed the suspension and ordered legal aid for the survivor, these corrective steps do not alter the broader pattern established over the past 12 years.

On December 23, 2025 the Delhi High Court suspended the life sentence of Sengar, the expelled BJP legislator convicted in the 2017 Unnao rape case. The court held that Section 5(c) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act was inapplicable because Sengar, as an MLA, did not qualify as a “public servant” under Section 21 of the Indian Penal Code, following precedent from A.R. Antulay v. R.S. Nayak (1984). Having served seven years, Sengar had exceeded the minimum sentence under Section 4 POCSO, the court reasoned, warranting suspension during appeal.

This technical classification obscures the substantive reality: Sengar was convicted not merely of rape but of orchestrating systematic violence against the victim’s family, including the custodial death of her father. The decision reduces a case involving documented state complicity, witness elimination, and abuse of power to a question of statutory interpretation—exemplifying how legal formalism serves political ends.

Unnao: A Chronicle of State-Protected Criminality

On June 4, 2017, a 17-year-old girl was raped at Sengar’s residence after being lured under pretext of employment. For ten months, despite repeated complaints, the Uttar Pradesh police refused to register an FIR naming Sengar, who wielded considerable influence as a four-term BJP MLA. This initial protection—when evidence was fresh and investigation crucial—demonstrates how political alignment translates directly into immunity.

On April 3, 2018 the victim’s father was arrested after being assaulted by Sengar’s brother and associates. He died in custody on April 9 with 14 external injuries and a perforated colon causing blood poisoning. The case gained attention only after the minor attempted self-immolation outside the Chief Minister’s residence on April 8, alleging police inaction and threats.

The Allahabad High Court, taking suo moto cognisance, observed that “the law-and-order machinery and government officials were directly in league and under the influence of Kuldeep Singh”—a judicial finding establishing state complicity. Only after this extraordinary intervention was Sengar arrested.

On July 28, 2019 a truck with blackened plates struck the car carrying the survivor, her lawyer and two aunts in Rae Bareli. Both aunts died instantly; the survivor and lawyer were critically injured. The three assigned security personnel were suspiciously absent. The survivor’s lawyer eventually succumbed to injuries. She alleged that witnesses to her father’s custodial death were found mysteriously dead—suggesting systematic witness elimination.

The Supreme Court then transferred all five related cases from Uttar Pradesh to Delhi with Central Reserve Police Force protection—an extraordinary measure revealing the complete breakdown of justice machinery under political pressure. In December 2019, a Delhi trial court convicted Sengar, sentencing him to life imprisonment. In March 2020, he received an additional ten years for the father’s custodial death.

While the court’s interpretation that MLAs are not “public servants” follows precedent, it ignores critical considerations. Even accepting Section 5(c)’s non-applicability, Sengar remains guilty under Section 4 POCSO, which prescribes punishment from seven years to life imprisonment. The court converted this minimum threshold into an effective maximum, nullifying the trial court’s judgment that this case warranted maximum sentence.

Crucially, the order contains no prima facie finding regarding innocence or likelihood of acquittal—only statutory classification. Well-established precedent requires that sentence suspension in life imprisonment cases be granted only where conviction appears prima facie unsustainable. In Rajesh Upadhyay v. State of Bihar, Omprakash Sahni v. Jai Shankar Chaudhary (2023), and Jamanlal v. State of Rajasthan (2025), the Supreme Court held that courts must assess whether the convict has fair chances of acquittal and that few prosecution loopholes cannot justify suspension when offenses are grave.

The Supreme Court has consistently held that gravity of offense and role of accused are central to suspension decisions. In Sengar’s case, gravity extends far beyond rape: systematic abuse of power to obstruct investigation, custodial death (separately convicted), pattern of violence and intimidation, and suspicious deaths of witnesses. Yet the High Court’s “hyper-technical approach,” as legal commentator Manu Sebastian termed it, reduced this to statutory classification, avoiding engagement with substantive reality.

The survivor’s counsel raised serious concerns about safety, citing the 2019 accident, witness’ deaths, and Sengar’s political clout. The court dismissed these, stating that courts “cannot keep a person in custody, being apprehensive that police/paramilitary may not do their job properly,” as this “would undermine the laudable work of our police/paramilitary forces.”

This reasoning is remarkable for its detachment from the case record. The Allahabad High Court had explicitly found the police “in league” with Sengar. The systematic security failures, suspicious witness deaths, and custodial murder—all documented—establish not hypothetical concerns but demonstrated patterns of state failure and complicity.

The Broader Patterns

The Sengar treatment must be situated within broader patterns. The August 2022 remission of 11 convicted of gang-raping Bilkis Bano (pregnant) and murdering seven family members including her three-year-old daughter during the 2002 Gujarat riots provides the clearest parallel. Released after less than 15 years despite Supreme Court-affirmed convictions, they were welcomed with sweets and garlands. Only after sustained outcry did the Supreme Court strike down the remission in January 2024, ordering their return to prison. The initial act revealed state priorities: perpetrators of communal violence received clemency regardless of crime gravity.

Asaram Bapu (convicted 2018 for raping a teenage girl) and Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh (convicted of rape and murder conspiracy) both enjoyed close relationships with the BJP. Despite conviction, both received multiple parole instances—Ram Rahim over 200 days in recent years—raising questions about differential treatment. The message: ideological alignment provides protection even for heinous crimes.

Kapil Mishra’s recorded speech immediately before the February 2020 Delhi riots, giving the police an ultimatum to clear anti-CAA protesters, led to no arrest or prosecution. Meanwhile, Muslim youth who organised peaceful protests were charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and remain incarcerated years later.

In contrast, there is a pattern of persecution of dissent. The Bhima Koregaon case perhaps best exemplifies it. Following violence at a January 2018 Dalit commemoration event, prominent civil rights activists, lawyers, professors, and poets were arrested under UAPA, charged with Maoist links and conspiracy to assassinate the Prime Minister. Forensic analysis by international experts revealed key documents were planted on defendants’ computers through malware. Yet, the accused have spent years in jail awaiting trial, one of them—Father Stan Swamy—having already died in custody. What united them was opposition to Hindutva politics and solidarity with marginalised communities.

Following the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests and the February 2020 Delhi riots with over 50 deaths (predominantly Muslim), arrests have been overwhelmingly of Muslim activists and students who organised protests, charged under the UAPA. Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, Khalid Saifi and others remain jailed on conspiracy charges while recorded hate speeches by BJP leaders inciting violence led to no consequences.

Activist Teesta Setalvad who pursued the case of the killing of Ehsan Jafri and former Gujarat ADGP R.R. Sreekumar who had exposed police inaction during the 2002 riots in the state, were arrested and incarcerated.

Even peaceful protester Sonam Wangchuk, the renowned education reformer, faced detention at the Delhi border during his Gandhian march from Ladakh seeking constitutional protections. A man internationally recognised for educational innovation was treated as a threat requiring preventive detention.

Mechanisms Enabling Selective Justice

The UAPA, a law drafted for exceptional threats, now functions as a routine instrument of political control. This law enables detention without charge sheets for months, denies the presumption of innocence by reversing burden of proof, and permits designating individuals as “terrorists” without adjudication. Its conviction rate remains negligible, which exposes the reality: punishment is delivered through the process itself. The trial becomes irrelevant; the incarceration is the objective.

Investigative agencies such as the CBI, the Enforcement Directorate and the National Investigation Agency increasingly resemble enforcement wings of the ruling establishment rather than independent institutions. Their timing, targets, and silence are revealing: critics face sudden raids, asset freeze, and arrests, while allies see investigations quietly diluted, delayed, or abandoned. The process maps directly onto political expediency, not criminality.

The sheer backlog of cases becomes a resource to be weaponised. For the protected, time erodes evidence, witnesses retract, and proceedings lose urgency. For dissenters, bail hearings stretch for years, ensuring incarceration without conviction. Freedom becomes a privilege, not a right.

A compliant media ecosystem supplies the ideological cover. Arrests of activists are framed as proof of guilt, anti-state conspiracy, or “urban Naxalism.” Meanwhile, crimes committed by those aligned with the ruling bloc are reframed as aberrations, exaggerations, or politically motivated allegations. Public perception is engineered to legitimise selective prosecution and normalise selective impunity.

The Sengar case exemplifies a recurring pattern: protection during the crime, violence to block justice, conviction only after extraordinary intervention, and eventual relief through technicalities that ignore the core wrongdoing. In Unnao, the police refused to file a First Information Report, the survivor’s father died in custody, witnesses were eliminated or intimidated, and the prosecution moved forward only when the Supreme Court shifted the case out of Uttar Pradesh. Now, after all this, suspension of the life sentence rests on the claim that an MLA is not a “public servant” under POCSO—a semantic escape hatch that erases the substance of the crime. This isn’t a one-off failure. It mirrors what we’ve seen in other cases: protection and second chances for those politically aligned; pre-emptive arrests, bail denials and open-ended incarceration for dissenters. The contrast is the point. The Law becomes a filter—shield for some, weapon for others. That is not the rule of law; it is rule by power.

Institutions aren’t collapsing; they are decaying. Agencies behave like political instruments, the courts grow cautious when the state’s interests are at stake, and rights turn conditional. The shell of democracy remains, but the content is being hollowed out. This is how authoritarianism advances: not by discarding constitutional forms, but by emptying them of meaning.

Seen in this light, the Sengar order is not just a judgement—it’s an indication of where the Republic stands. It signals that impunity is available to those who belong, and punishment awaits those who don’t. When justice depends on ideological location rather than conduct, a country crosses a line. India now seems dangerously close to that line, if not already having crossed it.

(Views expressed are personal)

Anand Teltumbde is an Indian scholar, writer and human rights activist.