The Supreme Court on Monday will hear a slew of petitions challenging the release of 11 convicts who gang-raped Bilkis Bano and murdered her family members during the Godhra riots in 2002.
Bano was gang-raped and left to die alongside 14 members of her family, including her three-year-old daughter, during the post-Godhra riots in March 2002. Rioters attacked her family in Vadodara while she was five months pregnant.
On August 10, last year, the Gujarat government granted remission to 11 convicts, after which they walked free on August 15, 2022.
A bench of Justices KM Joseph and BV Nagarathna will hear the matter today.
On March 22, Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud announced the formation of a bench to hear pleas. “I’ll put together a bench. It will need the destruction of two benches. I’ll look into it this evening,” he remarked when Bano’s lawyer, Shobha Gupta, mentioned the plea for an early hearing of the case.
Earlier, advocate Gupta mentioned the matter for urgent hearing and stated that the CJI should form a fresh bench because Justice Bela M Trivedi has recused herself from hearing the appeal.
Bano had filed a review appeal seeking a review of its earlier ruling in which it had urged the Gujarat government to consider the plea for the remission of one of the convicts, in addition to a petition against the pre-mature release of convicts.
The review petition was dismissed. Few PILs were filed in order to revoke the remission granted to 11 convicts.
The National Federation of Indian Women, whose General Secretary is Annie Raja, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s Subhashini Ali, writer Revati Laul, social activist and professor Roop Rekha Verma, and TMC MP Mahua Moitra filed the petitions.Gujar
In their affidavit, the Gujarat government defended the remission granted to convicts, claiming that they had served 14 years of their sentence and their “behavior was found to be good.”
According to the State government, it has considered the cases of all 11 convicts in accordance with the 1992 policy, and remission was given on August 10, 2022, and the Central government likewise approved the pre-mature release of convicts.
It is worth noting that the remission was not awarded in accordance with the circular governing the grant of remission to inmates as part of the commemoration of “Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav,” as stated.
The government further questioned the petitioners’ locus standi in filing the PIL contesting the ruling, claiming they are outsiders to the case.
The pleas stated that they have challenged the ruling of competent authority of the government of Gujarat by which 11 people convicted of a series of heinous crimes committed in Gujarat were allowed to walk free on August 15, 2022, due to remission.
Remission in this horrible instance would be utterly against public interest and would shock the collective public consciousness, as well as entirely against the interests of the victim (whose family has publicly expressed concern for her safety), pleas stated.
On August 15, the Gujarat government released the 11 convicts who had been sentenced to life in jail. All 11 life-term convicts in the case were released under Gujarat’s remission policy at the time of their conviction in 2008.
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