Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Ramdular Gond was on Friday sentenced to 25 years imprisonment by a court in Uttar Pradesh's Sonbhadra district in a 2014 rape case of a 15-year-old girl. Special Judge (MP/MLA court) Ahsanullah Khan pronounced the judgment two days after holding Gond, a first-time MLA, guilty under Sections 376 (rape) and 506 (causing disappearance of evidence and giving false information) of the Indian Penal Code and provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. With this, Gond, who is MLA from the Duddhi constituency in Sonbhadra district, faces the prospect of losing his membership from the Uttar Pradesh Assembly. The legislator, who was out on bail in the case, was then taken into custody soon after he was convicted. “On Friday, MLA Ramdular was brought to the court amid tight security. The court sentenced him to 25 years imprisonment and also imposed a fine of Rs 10.5 lakh. The court directed to give penalty amount to the complainant,” said Special Public Prosecutor (Sonbhadra) Satya Prakash Tripathi. Ram Briksh Tiwari, the MLA's lawyer, said they would file an appeal against the judgement. According to the prosecution, Gond caught the girl and tried to sexually assault her when she had gone to a nearby field to answer nature’s call in the evening on November 4, 2014. On returning home, the girl informed her family about her ordeal. “The victim also told her family that Ramdular had raped her several times in the past one year by threatening her,” the complainant's lawyer Vikas Shakya said. During the trial, the prosecution claimed that the girl was born in 1998, while the MLA submitted her school documents claiming she was born in 1994, said Tripathi. At the time of the incident, Ramdular’s wife Sooran Devi was the panchayat pradhan. The victim's family alleged that in the last nine years, they faced a lot of pressure and intimidation from the MLA and his associates to withdraw the case. The complainant, now 25, lives with her husband and in-laws. Gond became MLA after defeating his nearest rival Vijay Singh of the Samajwadi Party in the Assembly elections.
