Picture : Twitter/ ANI
The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear a petition challenging the remission granted by the Gujarat government to 11 convicts who had gangraped Bilkis Bano and murdered her family members during the 2002 Godhra riots.
A bench of Chief Justice of India NV Ramana agreed to look into the matter after advocate Aparna Bhat mentioned the matter seeking an urgent listing on Wednesday.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal also mentioning the matter said, “The Supreme Court gave a discretion to the government to consider it. We are challenging the remission, not the order of Supreme Court”.
The plea before the apex court was filed by member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Subhashini Ali, journalist Revati Laul, and social activist and professor Roop Rekha Verma.
The plea sought setting aside of order granting remission to 11 convicts and directing their immediate re-arrest.
“It is submitted that it would appear that the constitution of members of the competent authority of the Gujarat government also bore allegiance to a political party, and also were sitting MLAs. As such, it would appear that the competent authority was not an authority that was entirely independent, and one that could independently apply its mind to the facts at hand,” the plea stated.
Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra has also moved the apex court against the early release of 11 convicts in Bilkis Bano case.
The plea filed by three women said they have challenged the order of competent authority of the government of Gujarat by way of which 11 persons who were accused in a set of heinous offences committed in Gujarat were allowed to walk free on August, 15, 2022, pursuant to remission being extended to them.
“The 11 persons were sentenced to life imprisonment for commission of the offences of, inter alia, gang-rape and murder of multiple people during the large-scale communal riots in Gujarat in 2002 on January 18, 2008 passed by the Sessions Court in Greater Mumbai and the conviction was upheld by way of Judgment dated May 4, 2017 passed by High Court of Mumbai,” the petition stated.
The petition said the case which led to the conviction of the 11 convicts was investigated by the CBI, accordingly, grant of remission solely by the Gujarat government without any consultation with the Central government is impermissible in terms of the mandate of Section 435 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.
The remission in this heinous case would be entirely against public interest and would shock the collective public conscience, as also be entirely against the interests of the victim (whose family has publicly made statements worrying for her safety).
“It is submitted that on such facts (facts of the case), no right thinking authority applying any test under any extant policy would consider it fit to grant remission to persons who are found to have been involved in the commission of such gruesome acts,” said the plea.
The Gujarat government released the 11 convicts, who were sentenced to life imprisonment, on August 15.
Meanwhile, all the 11 life-term convicts in the case were released as per the remission policy prevalent in Gujarat at the time of their conviction in 2008.
In March 2002 during the post-Godhra riots, Bano was allegedly gang-raped and left to die with 14 members of her family, including her three-year-old daughter. She was five months pregnant when rioters attacked her family in Vadodara.
