Following a 25-year jail sentence in a rape case, a BJP MLA was disqualified

Lucknow: According to official sources on Saturday, BJP MLA Ramdular Gond, who was recently found guilty of raping a girl nine years ago and sentenced to 25 years of hard labor, is no longer eligible to serve in the Uttar Pradesh legislature.

A legislator serving a two-year or longer prison term is barred from office “from the date of such conviction” and is barred from office for an additional six years upon their release, according to the Representation of the People Act.

Gond was also fined ₹ 10 lakh by Ahsan Ullah Khan, the additional district and sessions judge of the MP-MLA court in Sonbhadra. The eight-year-old girl’s mother and the now-married rape victim would get the whole amount.

The court found the MLA from the Duddhi seat, which is reserved for Scheduled Tribes, guilty on December 12 and declared the extent of the penalty three days later, according to Special Public Prosecutor Satyaprakash Tripathi.

The rape incident occurred in 2014, and upon the brother of the victim’s complaint, a case was filed against Gond under the provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, as well as under IPC sections 376 (rape) and 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation).

According to Tripathi, Gond was not an MLA at the time, and his wife was a gram pradhan.

Following Gond’s election as a lawmaker, the case was moved from the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses (POCSO Act) court to the MP-MLA court.

Several legislators in Uttar Pradesh have lost their seats after being found guilty in different incidents.

Azam Khan, the MLA for the Samajwadi Party (Rampur Sadar seat), and Vikram Singh Saini, the MLA for the BJP (Khatauli seat), were disqualified in October 2022.

Saini was disqualified after his two-year prison sentence in a 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots case, whilst Khan was targeted after receiving a three-year sentence in a 2019 hate speech case.

Due to his conviction in a rape case, Unnao MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar was removed from the legislature in February 2020. The BJP has already expelled him.

Abdullah Azam Khan, son of Azam Khan and MLA for Samajwadi Party, was sentenced to two years in prison for organizing a sit-in on a highway after the police stopped his cavalcade to conduct a check after an attack on a CRPF camp in Rampur on December 31, 2007. As a result, Abdullah Azam Khan lost his Assembly membership in February of this year.