The Supreme Court on Thursday transferred all the five cases relating to the Unnao rape to Delhi and directed the CBI to complete within a fortnight — preferably seven days — its probe into the July 28 road crash that has left the rape victim and her lawyer fighting for life and killed two of her aunts.
A special court to be constituted “forthwith” in the capital shall complete the trial within 45 days, holding day-to-day hearings, it said.
A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose, which conducted three separate hearings, exercised its special powers under Article 142 to pass the directions without hearing the accused.
It ordered the Yogi Adityanath government to pay within a day a compensation of Rs 25 lakh to the victim’s family and directed that the CRPF provide immediate security to the family.
Besides the rape case against Kuldeep Singh Sengar, a BJP MLA suspended by his party only on Tuesday, and the road crash case, the others relate to the gang rape of the victim, the death in custody of her father and the alleged frame-up of her uncle on criminal charges.
Looking inwards, too, the court ordered a probe into any lapses by the Supreme Court registry that had failed to inform the Chief Justice of the July 12 letter written by the victim and her mother to it, seeking protection. The probe will be completed in seven days.
The investigation into the July 28 road crash “shall be expedited and completed within seven days from today”, the court said. “However, if any further time is required, the investigating authority (CBI) need not revert to the court, but may avail of further time of one week, which extension should be construed as an exception. In other words, in any circumstance, the investigation will be completed within a fortnight from today, preferably within 7 days,” it said.
“The trial judge to whom the cases have been earmarked will commence the trial forthwith on a day-to-day basis and will ensure completion of trial of all the five cases within 45 days from commencement of the trial,” the court said.
The accused “will be at liberty to come to this court seeking vacation/modification/alteration of this order, if so advised. We have deemed it proper to pass the order of transfer and expeditious trial ex-parte in the facts and circumstances of the case,” the CJI said.The court asked the counsel for the family of the victim, who was a minor when she was assaulted in 2017, whether they would like her to be moved to AIIMS, Delhi, from the Lucknow hospital where she is on life support. The court also asked if the lawyer’s family wanted him moved out of Lucknow for treatment.
