Om Prakash Rajbhar, the panchayati raj minister of Uttar Pradesh, could not hold back laughter on Wednesday when asked about the Delhi police forcibly removing the Unnao gang-rape survivor and her mother from the lawns of India Gate in Delhi where they were protesting against the bail and suspension of life sentence granted to BJP former MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar in the case.

“Ab ghar to unka Unnao hai [but their home is in Unnao],” Rajbhar, of the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, said before bursting into laughter at his own wit when reporters asked him for comment.

“I felt like ending my life at that moment, but thoughts of my family stopped me,” the survivor said on Tuesday evening after she and her mother were dragged away with multiple personnel holding their feet and hand because it was not the designated spot for protests.

She also alleged that she was not allowed to meet her lawyer and that her mother was thrown in the middle of the road.

"Is such treatment of a gang rape survivor appropriate?” Rahul Gandhi, leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, asked in a post on X (formerly Twitter) in Hindi while reposting footage of the survivor and her mother being dragged away.

“Is it her 'fault' that she has the courage to raise her voice for justice? "The fact that her perpetrator (former BJP MLA Sengar) has been granted bail is extremely disappointing and shameful -- especially when the survivor is being repeatedly harassed and is living under the shadow of fear.

"Bail for rapists and treating survivors like criminals -- what kind of justice is this? We are not just becoming a dead economy -- with such inhuman incidents, we are also turning into a dead society.

"The survivor deserves respect, safety and justice -- not helplessness, fear and injustice," he asserted.

On 4 June 2017, the girl, then a minor, met Sengar, then BJP MLA from Unnao, around 65km from state capital Lucknow, at his residence requesting for a job. She was raped.

Seven days later, she was abducted by three men, sedated and gang-raped for days.

She and her father filed an FIR on 20 June, 2017.

More than six years after a trial court sentenced Sengar to life imprisonment in the case, a division bench of Delhi High Court on Monday suspended his sentence and granted him conditional bail.

The bench, comprising Justice Subramonium Prasad and Justice Harish Vaidyanathan, directed Sengar to furnish a personal bond of Rs 15 lakh with three sureties of the said amount.

It had taken nearly 10 months for the Unnao case to come to national attention – after the survivor’s father was assaulted, jailed and died under mysterious circumstances in custody.

Sengar remains in jail as he is also serving a 10-year term in connection with that case.

The Unnao rape case and other connected cases were transferred from Uttar Pradesh to Delhi on the directions of the Supreme Court in August 2019.

"If the convict gets bail in a case like this, how will the country's daughters remain safe? For us, this decision is no less than 'kaal' [death]," the survivor said. "Those with money win, those without money lose.”