The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) of India has arrested Bharataiya Janata Party (BJP) Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) of Uttar Pradesh (UP) Kuldeep Singh Sengar from his Lucknow residence Friday morning after he ignored UP CM Yogi Adityanath's advice to surrender before UP police and cease the BJPs continuing political embarrassment.
CBI took over the Unnao rape case from the UP Police on Thursday night within hours of the papers reaching Delhi from Lucknow as the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) is said to have intervened to hasten the formalities and the DoPT which works under the Prime Minister immediately issued a notification in this regard, The Economic Times reported. The Central BJP leadership on Wednesday had advised the UP government to transfer the case to the CBI. Earlier on Thursday, the Adityanath government had lodged a case of rape against Sengar but decided against arresting him and threw the ball into the CBI court which it said would take a call on the matter.
With nearly a dozen Thakur MLAs of the BJP ganging up behind Sengar, the Yogi government seemed wary of acting against Sengar ahead of elections to the UP Legislative Council later this month.
The UP government told the Allahabad High Court on Thursday that there was no adequate evidence in the rape case to arrest the MLA after the court pointedly asked if the police will arrest Sengar or not after booking him for rape as well as under the stringent Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses (POCSO) Act.
Earlier in the day, UP’s Principal Secretary (Home) Arvind Kumar and DGP OP Singh in a press conference repeatedly referred to Sengar as ‘
Mananiye Vidhayak Ji’ (respected MLA) and said the rape case as well as that of the custodial death of the victim’s father was being referred to CBI which will now take the call to arrest the MLA if it gets adequate evidence.
