The Supreme Court on Monday quashed the Gujarat government’s decision to grant remission to 11 convicts in the case of gangrape of Bilkis Bano and the murder of seven of her family members during the 2002 Gujarat riots. The court also rejected the prayer of the convicts to protect their liberty, and directed them to report to jail authorities in two weeks.
The court noted, “Gujarat government had no jurisdiction to entertain the application for remission or pass the orders as it was not the appropriate government.”
It added that the appropriate government to decide remission is the state within whose jurisdiction the accused were sentenced and not the state within whose territorial limits the offence was committed or the accused were imprisoned. Gujarat usurped the power vested in Maharashtra to pass orders of remission, the court said.
In 2008, a trial court in Mumbai had sentenced 11 convicts for life. In May 2017, the Bombay High Court had upheld the trial court’s order.
The bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan also observed that its May 2022 order directing Gujarat government to decide the remission was secured by suppressing facts and fraud played on court.
“The SC order of May 13, 2022 directing Gujarat govt to decide the remission as per 1992 policy being a nullify, all the proceedings in pursuance of the order stands vitiated,” the court pronounced.
The Gujarat government had on August 15, 2022 released the 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano case under its 1992 remission and premature release policy. This came after one of the convicts, Radheshyam Shah, who was sentenced to life imprisonment by a CBI court in Mumbai in 2008, approached the Supreme Court after completing 15 years and four months in jail.
Following the state government’s decision, Bano moved the SC saying “the en masse premature release of the convicts… has shaken the conscience of the society”. She termed it “one of the most gruesome crimes this country has ever seen” and added she was “shell shocked, completely numb…” after the convicts were released.
Bilkis was 21 years old and five months pregnant when she was gang-raped while fleeing the communal violence that broke out after the Godhra train-burning incident. Her three-year-old daughter was among the seven family members killed during the riots.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
First uploaded on: 08-01-2024 at 10:56 IST
