The Supreme Court on Monday will pronounce its verdict on petitions challenging the remission granted by Gujarat government to 11 convicts in the case of gangrape of Bilkis Bano and murder of seven of her family members during the 2002 Gujarat riots. A bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan had reserved its decision in the matter on October 12, 2023. 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. Petitions were filed in the SC challenging the decision, including by CPI (M) leader Subhashini Ali, Prof Rooplekha Verma, journalist Revati Laul and then TMC MP Mahua Moitra. The convicts, however, questioned their locus standi to intervene in a criminal case. Some of them contended that “none of” the petitioners “are related whatsoever to the said case and only happens to be either political activists or a third party stranger to the said case”. Moving the SC, Bano had said “the en masse premature release of the convicts. has shaken the conscience of the society”. Bano termed it “one of the most gruesome crimes this country has ever seen” and added that the premature release came as a shock not only to her, but to her daughters, family and the society at large. She said she was “shell shocked, completely numb.” after the convicts were released. In a separate petition, she also sought review of the SC’s May 13, 2022 order which said the government of Gujarat was the appropriate government to decide the prayer of one of the convicts for remission and as per the state’s 1992 remission policy.
