Counsel for Bilkis Bano, a gang-rape survivor in the Gujarat riots, on December 12 made an urgent mentioning before the Supreme Court for an early listing of her review petition.
Bilkis Bano has sought a review of a Supreme Court judgment of May 2022. The judgment had paved the way for the Gujarat government to consider and thereafter release 11 convicts serving life sentence in her case under the State’s Premature Release Policy of 1992.Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, on Monday, December 12, informed her advocate Shobha Gupta, Ms. Bano’s lawyer, that the review petition would be listed before a Bench for consideration through circulation. “I will have it placed early,” Chief Justice Chandrachud said.
Ms. Gupta said a writ petition filed by Ms. Bano against the convicts’ release has already been listed before a bench led by Justice Ajay Rastogi on December 14. In her writ petition, Ms. Bano has forcefully argued that the early release of the convicts amounted to a violation of her fundamental right to life.
Before this, the other writ petitions filed by CPI (M) leader Subhashini Ali, former vice chancellor, Lucknow university, Roop Rekha Verma and TMC leader Mahua Moitra have also challenged the early release of the convicts. These petitions were last heard by Justice Rastogi’s Bench on October 18. The court had then given petitioners time to respond to a Gujarat government affidavit which showed that the Special Judge and the CBI in Mumbai had opposed the premature release of the 11 convicts.
In her review petition, Bilkis Bano, through Ms. Gupta, has said the remission policy of the State of Maharashtra, where the trial happened, and not Gujarat would have governed the case.
The affidavit by the State of Gujarat had shockingly revealed that while the Superintendent of Police, CBI, Special Crime Branch, Mumbai and the Special Judge (CBI) of Greater Bombay opposed the premature release all the authorities in Gujarat and the Home Ministry recommended their release.
“All the prisoners have completed 14 plus years in the prison under life imprisonment and opinions of the authorities concerned have been obtained as per the premature release policy of 1992 and submitted to the Ministry of Home Affairs vide letter dated June 28, 2022 and sought the approval of the Government of India. The Government of India conveyed the concurrence/approval of the Central government under Section 435 of the Code of Criminal Procedure for premature release of 11 prisoners in a letter on July 11, 2022,” the 57-page affidavit had said.
The State has also clarified that, contrary to popular perceptions, the early release of the 11 convicts was not as per a circular allowing remission to prisoners as part of the celebration of ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav’. The State government had maintained that it followed the 1992 Premature Release Policy. The remission was granted on August 10, 2022.
Both solicitor general Tushar Mehta, for Gujarat, and advocate Rishi Malhotra, for the accused, had both made an issue of the locus standi of “third party petitioners” to challenge the premature release”. They had dubbed the petitioners as “interlopers”.
“I will stand & fight again, against what is wrong & for what is right, for women everywhere’: Bilkis Bano
On December 1, 2022, after her initial reaction of horror at the convicts release in August 2022, Bilkis Bano had issued a powerful statement. ‘Though numb with shock on the convicts release, and though the decision to once again stand up and knock on the doors of justice was not easy for me…. “ Bilkis speaks on how, once again she has approached the portals of justice
I will stand and fight again, against what is wrong and for what is right,” said Bilkis Bano, a 2002 mass rape survivor, who has moved the Supreme Court challenging the remission and release of 11 convicts, who gang-raped her and killed her family members, including her three-old daughter, in 2002.
In a pithy but strong statement, issued on Thursday, December 1, she had said, “The decision to once again stand up and knock on the doors of justice was not easy for me. For a long time, after the men who destroyed my entire family and my life were released, I was simply numb. I was paralysed with shock and with fear for my children, my daughters, and above all, paralysed by loss of hope.”
“The spaces of my silence were filled with other voices; voices of support from different parts of the country that have given me hope in the face of unimaginable despair; and made me feel less alone in my pain. I cannot express in words what this support has meant to me,” she added.
It may be recalled that Bilkis Bano was a mere 21 years old and five months pregnant when she was gang-raped. Fourteen of her family members including her young daughter were killed in the brutal attack in Gujarat’s Dahod district. At the crossroads of Randhikpur and Sanjeli while she and her extended family tries to flee the orchestrated attack, they were laid upon and mass atrocities were committed. In both her separate petitions, she has challenged the premature release of the convicts by the Gujarat government on August 15, saying it has “shaken the conscience of society”.
Immediately after the convicts were released, ironically on and after India’s 75th Independence Day on August 15, 2022, Justice U.D. Salvi, the former Bombay high court judge who had convicted them, condemned the move, saying it ‘has set a very bad precedent’.
The convicts, in fact, received a ‘heroic welcome’ amidst fanfare, triggering controversy.
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. The media, especially the Indian Express, had reported the over 1,000 days of parole granted to several of the convicts while serving sentence and how even one of them was booked for allegedly misconduct with women, while on parole.
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