New SC bench to hear pleas on early release of Bilkis case convicts

On March 22, Advocate Shobha Gupta, representing Bano, told a bench presided by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud that Justice Trivedi had recused from hearing the case and urged him to set up a special bench to hear it.

The CJI agreed to the request and said he will list it for hearing at the earliest.

No reason had been given for Justice Trivedi’s recusal. She was law secretary to the Gujarat government from 2004 to 2006.

Bilkis was gang-raped and her three-year-old daughter was among 14 people killed by a mob on March 3, 2002, in the Limkheda taluka of Gujarat’s Dahod district during the riots. The 11 convicts were released on August 15 last year.

Bilkis had said in her plea, “The en masse premature release of the convicts… has shaken the conscience of society”. She said the Supreme Court had earlier held in the past that en masse remissions cannot be permitted and that the case of each convict will have to be separately examined before extending the relief.

She termed it as “one of the most gruesome crimes this country has ever seen” and added that the premature release of the convicts came as a shock not only to her, but to her grown-up daughters, family, and to society at large, nationally and internationally. Narrating what she went through, Bilkis said their premature release has also “relived” her “trauma”.