Kuldeep Sengar was expelled from the party in 2019 (File)
Lucknow:
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has won the assembly bypoll in Uttar Pradesh’s Bangermau seat, which had fallen vacant after the sitting MLA from the party, Kuldeep Singh Sengar, was convicted in a rape case earlier this year.
BJP’s Shrikant Katiyar defeated the Congress’s Arti Bajpai by 31,398 votes, data on the Election Commission website shows.
Unnao’s Bangermau is among the seven assembly constituencies in the state that went to bypolls this month. The BJP has won five of them and is leading in one. The Samajwadi Party has also won a seat.
Kuldeep Sengar was convicted for raping a 17-year-old girl and was sentenced to life imprisonment, in February.
He was also sentenced to 10 years in prison for killing the father of the girl. His brother and co-accused, Atul Singh Sengar, was handed a similar term.
“There can be no denying that rule of law was broken. Sengar was a public functionary and had to maintain the rule of law. The way the crime has been committed, it does not call for leniency,” the court had ruled.
The case had hit headlines after the survivor attempted suicide outside the chief minister’s residence in 2017, and alleged that the police had not taken action against the MLA despite her complaint.
Two days later, her father died in police custody.
Sengar was expelled from the party in 2019. He was disqualified from the assembly in February this year.
