The Supreme Court on Thursday announced it would order the transfer of all four cases related to the rape of a minor girl in Unnao allegedly by a BJP MLA from Uttar Pradesh to Delhi.
The Supreme Court issued the order during a hearing it had announced following a car accident that left the Unnao survivor and her lawyer critically injured on Sunday. Two of the survivor's aunts died in the accident, which occurred as the car they were travelling in was hit by a truck.
The Supreme Court had called for the hearing to seek a status report on the investigation into the Unnao survivor's accident. It had sought a report from the Uttar Pradesh government. During the hearing, Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi also asked a CBI officer to be present to appraise it of the progress in the investigations of the rape case and the car accident by 12pm on Thursday.
On Wednesday, Gogoi had expressed his displeasure at not receiving a letter from the Unnao survivor, which was sent on July 12.
Before the Supreme Court took up the Unnao matter, there was some speculation about whether the application was posted at all to the Supreme Court. However, Vimal Kumar Yadav (the junior of Mahendra Singh, the lawyer who was injured) said that he sent the applications on his own. "I have the receipts for the registries of the applications. Had they not been delivered, they would have come back to the sender" he told THE WEEK.
(With inputs from Puja Awasthi)