Indian MPs protest over fatal car crash involving woman who accused government politician of rape

Opposition members of India’s parliament protested on Tuesday as part of the growing outcry over the case of a woman who accused a prominent politician of rape and was then critically injured in a car crash.

MPs from regional parties and the main opposition Congress twice stormed out of proceedings in the lower house, the Lok Sabha, at one point filling the well of the house in front of the speaker’s chair and shouting “we want justice”.

It comes after the Sunday afternoon head-on-collision involving the woman who has accused Kuldeep Singh Sengar, a state assembly member for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh, of raping her in 2017.

The accuser’s lawyer was also in the car and critically hurt, while two of the woman’s aunts - one of whom was herself a key witness in a related case - died in the crash. The family said on Monday that they believed the crash was an attack arranged by Sengar to prevent his case going to trial, an allegation his lawyer denied.

Outside parliament, opposition MPs gathered with activists to call for action to protect the woman and her family, holding up placards with slogans including “India Ashamed [of] #Unnao”, a reference to the village where the alleged rape is said to have happened.

“Every Indian hangs his head in shame because of the horrific Unnao case and the violence committed against the victim,” said one of the MPs who took part, Dayanidhi Maran. “Raped, subjected to violence, kith and kin killed. Is this the ‘New India’ we want to live in?”

Other street protests were held both by women and student groups elsewhere in Delhi, and by Congress party workers in the UP state capital Lucknow, where the victim is in hospital and remains “critical”, her mother said.

Police in UP, who initially said they were treating Sunday’s crash as an accident, have now launched a murder probe with Sengar named in a police report as under investigation. The politician is already in jail awaiting trial over the original rape allegation, following a federal probe.

Congress’s general secretary, Priyanka Gandhi, suggested the ruling BJP was protecting Sengar and called on prime minister Narendra Modi to immediately sack him.

"Why do we give people like Kuldeep Sengar the strength and protection of political power and abandon their victims to battle for their lives alone?” she wrote on Twitter.

A party spokesman in the state, Rakesh Tripathi, insisted a disciplinary panel had suspended Sengar last year and asked for his explanation of the Unnao allegations. "He has not been sacked yet because the charges haven't been proven," Tripathi told Reuters news agency.

Yet Sengar, despite being in jail, still featured prominently in the BJP’s campaign in the region ahead of May’s general election. His face appeared on party campaign posters, while his wife shared a stage with the visiting chief minister of the state, Yogi Adityanath.

With the Unnao accuser’s uncle jailed on an unrelated attempted murder charge after the rape claim came to light, and the woman’s father killed in circumstances that have seen charges brought by federal investigators against Sengar’s brother and associates, the case has raised questions about the state of law and order in UP.

Mr Adityanath, a nationalist Hindu monk turned politician who is hugely popular among the far right wing of the BJP, has previously said law and order improved in the state since his party took power in 2017.