The Supreme Court on Monday stepped in to halt the Delhi High Court’s order that had suspended the life sentence of former BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar in the 2017 Unnao rape case. The stay came after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) flagged what it called serious legal flaws in the high court’s reasoning, arguing that the order ignored the gravity of the conviction and the nature of the punishment itself.
Before the top court, the agency made it clear that this was not a routine bail matter but a case involving a life sentence meant to last for the remainder of the convict’s natural life.
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Why the CBI moved the Supreme Court
Challenging the high court’s decision, the CBI described the order as “contrary to law” and “perverse”. Appearing for the agency, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said the ruling failed to account for settled legal principles on suspension of sentence in serious offences like rape of a minor.
The Supreme Court subsequently stayed the order, signalling that the issues raised by the agency required closer scrutiny.
Survivor’s age was central to sentencing, says CBI
One of the CBI’s core arguments was that the trial court had conclusively established the survivor’s age at the time of the offence. According to the conviction record, the survivor was 15 years, 10 months and 13 days old in June 2017.
This finding, the agency said, was not incidental. It directly influenced sentencing and justified punishment under the harsher provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which deal with rape of a minor.
Life imprisonment means imprisonment for natural life
The CBI stressed that Sengar was convicted under Section 376(2) of the IPC, read with Section 376(2)(i), which was very much in force at the time of the offence. The provision prescribes a minimum sentence of ten years, which may extend to imprisonment for life, explicitly defined as imprisonment for the remainder of the person’s natural life.
Once such a conviction is recorded, the agency argued, the debate over whether Section 376(1) or 376(2) applies becomes largely academic for the purpose of suspending the sentence. Both provisions allow life imprisonment, and in this case, a life term was in fact imposed.
High court overlooked key legal issues, CBI argues
According to the CBI, the Delhi High Court failed to engage with a crucial point: that Sengar was serving a life sentence, not a fixed-term sentence that could be weighed against time already spent in jail.
The agency also objected to the high court’s focus on provisions of the POCSO Act while downplaying the IPC conviction. The trial court had convicted Sengar under both the IPC and the POCSO Act, but the suspension order relied heavily on the argument that he had already undergone more than seven years in prison, treating it as sufficient to consider bail.
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“That approach ignores the nature of a life sentence altogether,” the agency submitted.
Public servant question raises concern
Another major contention was the high court’s observation that Sengar was not a “public servant” at the time of the offence. The CBI challenged this interpretation as legally unsound.
The Supreme Court bench, led by Chief Justice Surya Kant, openly expressed concern over this logic. The bench remarked that such an interpretation could lead to an absurd situation where lower-level officials are treated as public servants for criminal liability, while elected representatives like MLAs or MPs are not.
Supreme Court stays order, but defends judiciary
During the hearing, the court was also informed about social media attacks targeting the Delhi High Court judges who passed the suspension order. Mehta firmly condemned these attacks, describing the judges as “among the finest in the country” with unimpeachable integrity.
The stay, he emphasised, was part of the judicial process and not an indictment of individual judges.
With the Supreme Court’s intervention, the suspension of sentence granted by the Delhi High Court remains on hold. The matter will now be examined in detail by the top court, which will decide whether a life sentence of this nature can be suspended at all.
