While the Supreme Court has ruled that the competent government to decide on the remission of the convictions in the Bilkis Bano case, which the court struck down on Monday, was the one in Maharashtra, it was also in the state that a prominent BJP leader, Devendra Fadnavis, disapproved of the felicitation the 11 men had received following their release from a Gujarat jail. Breaking ranks with other BJP leaders on the issue, the deputy chief minister said in the state legislature on August 23, 2022, “One of the members raised the Bilkis Bano case.There was no need to raise it here. the convicts served their sentence and were released as per the Supreme Court order. However, be it any accused, felicitating them on their release is wrong. A convict is a convict, and they cannot be felicitated.” The release of the 11 convicts was raised by the Opposition during a discussion in the Legislative Council on the issue of women’s safety in Maharashtra in the wake of several instances of sexual misconduct, including the rape of a girl in Bhandara by two men over three days. Later during an Idea Exchange session with The Indian Express, Fadnavis was asked if he had been questioned from within the BJP for speaking on the issue. “Nobody in my party questioned me. I said what I thought,” he replied. The Supreme Court ruled that the Gujarat government’s decision to remit the sentences in the Bilkis Bano case and set them free was illegal. “The Gujarat government had no jurisdiction to entertain the application for remission or pass the orders as it was not the appropriate government,” the court said. While the incident had taken place in Gujarat, the trial was shifted to Mumbai, where a special court convicted the accused in 2008. The Supreme Court noted that the appropriate government to decide on the remission was the state where the convicts were sentenced—and not where the offence was committed or the accused were imprisoned. The court thus ruled that the competent government in this matter would be the Maharashtra government. When one of the convicts, Radheshyam Shah, moved the Supreme Court in 2022 seeking remission, after he had completed 15 years and four months of the life term awarded to him by a CBI court in Mumbai, it was the Maha Vikas Aghadi government in power in the state. In an order dated May 13, 2022, the Supreme Court bench of Justices Ajay Rastogi and Vikram Nath asked the Gujarat government to consider Shah’s application for premature release “within a period of two months”, stating it was the “appropriate government” to decide on the issue—a stand contradicted by the latest ruling of the apex court in the case. Bilkis Bano was gang-raped and seven members of her family were murdered during the Gujarat riots of 2002. The 11 convicts were released by the Gujarat government under its remission and premature release policy on August 15, 2022. The Gujarat government, however, went against the opinion of the Mumbai trail court that had sentenced them to life imprisonment for rape and murder, by giving a negative opinion on the remission plea.
