Supreme Court judge Justice Bela M Trivedi, on Wednesday, rescued herself from hearing a batch of pleas challenging the remission of sentence of 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano case.
A batch of petitions was to be heard by a bench of Justice Ajay Rastogi and Justice Bela M Trivedi today on 4th Jan. As the proceedings began, Justice Rastogi said, “Since my sister judge has already recused herself from hearing the victim’s petition, she would like to recuse herself from hearing this matter as well.”
However, Justice Ajay Rastogi said that New Bench would hear the matter in the middle of February. This means that a new bench will be constituted for a hearing in February.
In fact, the Gujarat High Court had sentenced all the 11 accused to life imprisonment in 2008. But they were released from the Godhra sub-jail after the Gujarat government allowed their release under the state’s 1992 exemption policy.
The 11 convicts who were granted premature release are Jaswantbhai Nai, Govindbhai Nai, Shailesh Bhatt, Radhesham Shah, Bipin Chandra Joshi, Kesarbhai Vohania, Pradeep Mordhiya, Bakabhai Vohania, Rajubhai Soni, Mitesh Bhatt, and Ramesh Chandana.
These convicts had served more than 15 years in jail, one of them (Radheshyam Shah) approached the Supreme Court with a plea for his premature release pleading that he had already been in and served a prison sentence jail for 15 years and four months.
In May, the top court directed the state government to consider the convict’s plea for premature release in accordance with the 1992 policy. Even as the existing remission policy of 2014 (of the Gujarat government) prohibits the early release of rape convicts, But no such restrictions were existed in the 1992 policy.
